Movies : Whatever

RUPERT WAINWRIGHT / DIRECTOR

The scary summer continues with director Rupert Wainwright’s supernatural thriller “Stigmata,” on the heels of “The Blair Witch Project” and “The Sixth Sense.” Wainwright, 37, a veteran commercial and video director raised in Oxford, England, also made Disney’s “Blank Check” (released in 1994) and the 1996 Slamdance Festival hit “The Sadness of Sex.”

CROSS TO BEAR: “I wanted ‘Stigmata’ to come out at Easter, the first movie with a crucifixion scene to be released on Easter Day. But not everybody saw it that way. I wish it had come out before these other fabulous movies, but there’s always room for an intelligent, exciting thriller.”

WHY 2K?: “People say the [proliferation of supernatural themes] is because of the millennium. But it goes back five years to ‘Scream,’ after which there were about two years of dumb horror movies, and filmmakers went, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to make a smart horror movie?’ ”

OLD DEMONS: “I don’t mind being compared to ‘The Exorcist.’ But our movie is much more subjective. In ‘The Exorcist,’ Linda Blair is tied to a bed. In ours, you see the whole journey though Patricia Arquette’s eyes, experience it all.”

CALL THE VATICAN: “There have been rumblings [about “Stigmata”] from the Catholic Church. But when we did test screenings, we found that people who were Catholic enjoyed it more than others.”

CALL CHARLTON HESTON: “I’m working on a movie about a man who decides to take on the NRA, called ‘Gun Men’ and written by Joe Gayton. He loses his wife [in a shootout] and . . . decides to take matters into his own hands.”

TITANIC WAKE: “Another in development is ‘The Furthest Place,’ with Jim Cameron producing and written by David Schow, who wrote ‘The Crow.’ ”

WHICH OL’ WITCH: “I didn’t really love ‘Blair Witch,’ but it will say to people, ‘You don’t have to buy into the system. If you can get a few reels of film, you can go off and make your movie.’ A lot of really bad films will be made that way, but it could create a new wave of American cinema.”

PAYING THE PRICE: “Seems too many directors do a first film that’s great, but by the third or fourth are not so good. You go, ‘What happened?’ They bought a slightly too big house and shot a movie for the wrong reason. I promised I would never do that. Not again. Not after ‘Blank Check.’ ”