Mother of Tears

Starring Asia Argento, Moran Atias, Daria Nicoladi, Valeria Cavalli and Udo Kier

Produced by Medusa Film, Myriad Pictures, Opera Film Produzione

Written by Jace Anderson, Dario Argento, Walter Fasano, Adam Gierasch and Simona Simonetti

Directed by Dario Argento

Score: Technical: 100, Story: 90, Acting: 90, Overall Score: 93

I have been waiting for this movie to come out ever since I heard it was written, and boy, it was worth the wait! The third installment in Argento’s Three Mothers series (Suspiria and Inferno are the other two), Mother of Tears was gory, suspenseful and, above all, a great movie!

Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento) lives in Rome, studying art resortation and archeology, when one day a mysterious urn is brought into the office, her and an associate open the box, revealing a cloak and three stone figures. When coming back from a short break, Sarah discovers her collegue being eaten alive by three shadowy figures. From that point on, death and destruction follows her whereever she goes. Her close friend, Michael (Adam James) fears for his son’s life and flees and Sarah decides to do the same. She visits Padre Johannes (Udo Kier) who she is told knows the secret of the urn, but she finds out more than she wanted to know. Her mother, who was killed when she was a child, possessed a secret power…she’s a white witch. The urn is linked to a black witch, the Mother of Tears, who is said to have killed her mother after she deflated her power. The Mother of Tears is linked to two other witches, the Mother of Sorrow (Suspiria) and the Mother of Darkness (Inferno). The Mother of Tears is the youngest yet most powerful of the three, and she must be stopped or the ruthlessness in the city of Rome will spread to the rest of the world and soon kill us all.

This movie is by far an improvement not only for the Three Mothers series, but Argento’s films, period. The film has a beautiful look to it. It’s sharp and distinctly lit according to the mood of the film, but not as artsy as it was displayed in Suspiria or Inferno. There were a lot of signature Argento shots (i.e. the killer’s hands as his own, the shot of the stairs) as well as new techniques I haven’t see him use, such as the fast trucks into the characters.

As far as the acting goes, it wasn’t bad either. The horrible Italian-to-English dubbing wasn’t present in this film, with the exception of a few misdubbed screams here and there. The acting was believable but with a bit of schlock Argento is infamously known for. Asia, Dario’s daughter, is the lead in this film and it shows how great it translates on screen. That natural relaxation pulses through the screen and makes the film easy to watch. What I found disturbing, though, was the fact that there were scenes in which Asia was nude and knowing her father was behind the camera peering at her in the flesh (as an adult) really creeped me out. Of course, though, he’s seen her naked before…he is her dad.

This film was genuinely scary. Not only did it have a lot of nice, unexpected cheap scares (i.e. a fake scare followed by the real scare *loud noise BANG…loud noise BANG*), but the storyline was genuinely frightening. When the scene of the historical background of the urn happens, it is illustrated, giving the film a genuine old-school film style vs. a film reenactment. The film also did a great job tying in Suspiria and Inferno (the first especially) by referring to the other two witches and how each house (Friedburg, Germany in Suspiria and New York in Inferno) acted as a habitation for each woman and her powers. There was also mention of the main character in Suspiria, Suzy Bannion, throughout the film which really helped this film flow nicely and complete the series perfectly.

The gore was really taken up a notch as well in this film, sometimes being almost eerily realistic. There was a lot of blood, feces, intestines and pretty much anything else to offend the weak-stomached. Even I found myself at times with a rancid look on my face. The death scenes were all very creative (I particularly enjoyed the scene where a girl’s face is separated with a hand crank and then she is disemboweled and strangled with said bowel). It’s complex, I know, but it suited the Pagan theme well.

It was almost as if they were trying to go for shock factor, however, Argento managed to have a woman throw a baby off a bridge, someone bathe in their own feces, eyes getting gouged out, people having sex in blood, cut several throats and Achilles tendons not to mention an incredible painful-looking vagina stab.

The only thing bad I have to say about this movie is that the CGI was a bit cheesy. The churches didn’t look like they were caught on fire, but rather looked CGI-like, which broke that sense of reality. The ending moved a bit quickly, but I found that to be the case with the other two movies in the series as well, therefore it fits in alongside those.

DVD Special Features
-The ‘Making of’ Featurette
This features a lot of footage from the premiere in Rome including panel discussions, interviews with critics and fans and soundtrack performance clips
-Conversation with Dario Argento
Answers questions about this movie and the rest of the series as well as talking about working with his daughter, Asia, and Italian literature
-US Trailer
-Italian Teaser Trailer

In the end, there were a lot of great twists and turns and beautiful shots, not to mention the perfect script. The movie was perfect and concluded the last installment of a beloved horror series fantastically. I almost sort of wish he would’ve mentioned four witches…

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