As we neared the year 2000, Hollywood embraced a bunch of movies that hinted toward dark religious and/or apocalyptic themes. In that boat, we find 1999’s Stigmata.

When he investigates a supposed miraculous occurrence in Brazil, Father Andrew Kiernan (Gabriel Byrne) discovers it offers nothing more than an optical illusion. However, he does find a statue of the Virgin Mary that appears to weep real blood after the death of local priest Father Paulo Alameida (Jack Donner).

Someone steals Father Alameida’s rosary and it eventually winds up in the possession of Pittsburgh hairdresser Frankie Paige (Patricia Arquette). Before long, she experiences stigmata on her wrists and goes through a series of bizarre experiences that attract the attention of Father Kiernan and cause potential controversies.

Oh my, what a ridiculous movie! It doesn’t help that far too much of Stigmata borrows liberally from a much better film, 1973’s classic The Exorcist.

Father Tiernan’s time in Brazil feels a lot like Father Merrin’s visit to Iraq, and the way the stigmata takes over Frankie becomes awfully reminiscent of Regan’s possession. While Stigmata doesn’t act as a carbon copy of Exorcist, it can hit too close to that source.

Which wouldn’t seem so problematic if it didn’t offer such a witless form of ripoff. The harder Stigmata tries to seem scary and tense, the more ridiculous it becomes.

Director Rupert Wainwright knows one style: aggressive. He thinks that if he ratchets every scene to the max, it’ll make the movie dramatic and powerful.

Instead, the whole enterprise feels comically over the top. At its core, Stigmata boasts a story with ample potential to pack a punch.

Granted, much of the story doesn’t make much sense, but we can suspend disbelief for a supernatural tale such as this – if it delivers the goods. Which Stigmata doesn’t.

Instead, it just comes across as absurd from start to finish, mainly due to Wainwright’s cinematic choices. Essentially he decided to make a movie that resembled a 102-minute Marilyn Manson video, and this doesn’t work.

Most films feel like part of their era, but Stigmata takes the cinematic excesses of the late 1990s to a laughable extreme. Maybe we found stuff like this bracing and vivid 25 years ago, but now the filmmaking choices just look dopey.

Even beyond the screenplay’s many lapses of logic, it just doesn’t develop the characters or situations in a compelling manner. The film’s utter reliance on jump scares doesn’t help, as these feel cheap and gratuitous.

They worked on my dog, as some loud, sudden bursts of sound startled her. However, her human companion found Stigmata to offer a ridiculous and borderline campy dud.

Stigmata appears in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Expect a surprisingly poor presentation.

Sharpness appeared inconsistent. Some shots boasted reasonably good delineation, but a lot of the movie landed on the soft side.

No issues with jagged edges or moiré effects materialized, but more than a few prominent edge haloes cropped up along the way. Grain felt clumpy and more like noise, except in scenes that came across as too smoothed out, which happened at times.

Print flaws popped up few specks and marks. Though these didn’t dominate, they appeared with moderate frequency.

Colors walked a stylized path, as the movie generally mixed heavy ambers, chilly blues and garish greens. These looked muddy and without much clarity most of the time.

Blacks seemed inky and crushed, while low-light shots seemed murky. The image barely looked like a Blu-ray, as I often felt like I was watching a DVD.

Though easily superior to the problematic visuals, the movie’s DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack came with its own issues. While we got an active soundfield, the mix tended to seem too involving.

I guess I shouldn’t find hyper audio for an over the top movie to come as a surprise, but these choices tended to distract more than accentuate. Whereas the filmmakers clearly hoped the sonic decisions would add spark and pizzazz to the proceedings, instead they just felt overwheming.

Any scene that led toward anything potentially scary or creepy cranked the use of the various channels to “11”. In a superficial sense, this meant a lot of activity, and sometimes these decisions worked.

However, too many scenes ended up as overblown. Still, the track did enough right to make this a generally decent soundscape despite the “in yer face” nature.

Audio quality also seemed up and down, mainly because the track felt oddly devoid of low end much of the time. I waited for some good bass to kick into gear but that never happened, so the mix often came across as too thin.

Speech remained natural and concise, at least. Effects lacked distortion, but the minimal low end made those elements less impactful.

Some of the music showed decent range, but other aspects in that regard felt restrained. All of this left me with a “C+” for a too hyperactive and too bass-shy soundtrack.

We find a mix of extras, and we open with an audio commentary from director Rupert Wainwright. He delivers a running, screen-specific look at story/characters, history and religious concepts involved in the film, cast and performances, music, sets and locations, stunts, effects, editing, photography and connected domains.

In other words, Wainwright touches on pretty much everything one expects from a commentary - and some material one doesn't normally get. For instance, he happily points out mistakes and cheap Hollywood tropes found in Stigmata.

With happy talk kept to a minimum, this becomes a strong chat. Wainwright made a terrible movie but at least he delivered a terrific commentary.

In addition to an Alternate Ending (4:35), we get four Deleted Scenes. These span a total of 12 minutes, 55 seconds.

The biggest change to the “Alternate Ending” relates to the death of a character, though I won’t reveal which one. This makes the movie finish on a darker note but it doesn’t feel more satisfying than the theatrical conclusion.

As for the four deleted scenes, one of them offers an alternate alternate ending virtually identical to the alternate ending presented on its own. It differs so little that its presence here makes little sense.

Otherwise, we get a little more of the prologue in Brazil as well as extra attempted terror and a little character material. Nothing here seems useful, as these clips make an already overwrought movie even more over the top.

Along with the movie’s trailer, we get a featurette called Divine Rites. It runs 25 minutes, 37 seconds and offers info Wainwright, Fortean Times editor Bob Rickard, stigmata expert Dr. Ted Harrison, producer Frank Mancuso Jr., production designer Waldemar Kalinowski, director of photography Jeffrey Kimball, composer Billy Corgan, and actors Gabriel Byrne, Patricia Arquette, Nia Long, Jonathan Pryce,

“Rites” covers the history of stigmata as well as aspects of the movie’s production. The first section offers some interesting background but the film-specific bits usually feel perfunctory and promotional.

Part of a “pre-apocalyptic” boom of movies on the cusp of the new millennium, Stigmata looks ridiculous 25 years later. Despite a good cast, the film offers a completely silly and over the top experience. The Blu-ray comes with some good supplements but audio seems erratic and visuals barely surpass DVD quality. This becomes a flawed release for a terrible film.