10 More Horror Movies Hated By Critics But Audiences Loved
5. Stigmata
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 22%
Horror films centered around religion, and especially exorcisms, have a strange tendency to perform much better with general viewers than critics, perhaps because the latter have sat through literally hundreds of these things over the years.
Case in point, 1999's Patricia Arquette-starring supernatural horror Stigmata was disdained as unconvincing and poorly acted by reviewers, with Roger Ebert even calling it "possibly the funniest movie ever made about Catholicism."
For his performance, Gabriel Byrne meanwhile received a Worst Supporting Actor Razzie nomination. Yikes.
But audiences en masse didn't much agree, with the film both being a solid box office success and to date sitting at 63% on the viewer Tomatometer.
Though Stigmata isn't exactly held up today as an underrated gem ala Fallen, it did nevertheless hit the basic Exorcist knock-off beats effectively enough to pass the sniff test with the mainstream. Sometimes that's enough.