Mother of Tears

I have previously written about Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977) as well as its sequel Inferno (1980), but this time we are talking about the third movie in the trilogy:

Mother of Tears (2007).

Like the two other movies, Mother of Tears is directed by Dario Argento who also co-wrote them with his one time partner Daria Nicolodi. The movie stars Dario's and Daria's daughter Asia Argento, a whole bunch of actors I don't know and horror veteran Udo Kier. Like in Suspiria, Kier plays a small but important role, but they are not the same character in case anyone is wondering.

The core of the Mothers Trilogy is three ancient, evil and powerful witches, Mater Suspiriorum (Sighs), Mater Tenebrarum (Darkness) and Mater Lachrymarum (Tears). These three witches eventually settled down in Germany, New York and Rome. We see the story of Mater Suspiriorum in Suspiria, Mater Tenebrarum in Inferno and now Mater Lachrymarum in this movie.

Some spoilers ahead.

The movie opens with some workmen accidentally finding an old coffin with a box chained to it. A cardinal orders the coffin reburied, but keeps the box which is constantly referred to as an urn for some reason. He opens it, gets really scared and sends it to a friend who is the curator of a museum.

When the “urn” arrives, the curator is not in, so the assistant curator decides to open it and invites an American art student to join her. In order to translate some old text, the student Sara Mandy (Asia Argento) is sent to fetch a dictionary. While she is gone, three entities appear and murder the assistant curator in a seriously gory scene. Sara escapes only because a voice helps her. So far so good, but from here on the story gets a little convoluted.

The contents of the box seems to empower the Mother of Tears enormously and a make the citizens of Rome go crazy. People are murdered, they fight savagely in the streets, vandalism becomes commonplace, in short, things get pretty nuts. The other thing that happens is that witches from all over the world flock to Rome as Sara struggles to survive and find out what happens while dodging both witches and the police. She goes from person to person sometimes getting help, sometimes not. She does discover that the voice is her mother who was a powerful white witch that was murdered after fighting and grievously wounding the Mater Suspiriorum prior to the events in Suspiria. Fun fact, it is Daria Nicolodi who plays Sara's mother, in other words they are not just playing mother and daughter, they are mother and daughter.

Sara ultimately decides to confront the Mother of Tears in her lair and roll credits. There is obviously more, but as usual, you can watch the movie yourself.

Mother of Tears is a good idea executed in a sloppy manner. I like the overall feel of the movie, and the idea of a power that makes the population go nuts is cool, but even though the movie is 102 minutes long, it feels extremely rushed. Scenes begin only to quickly be shuffled along into the next one, characters are introduced and killed in the same breath and concepts are brought up only to never be explored again. It seriously grated on my nerves after a while.

The witches' arrival is also handled in a weird manner. They look like they just stepped out of an 80's pop music video. Big hair teased into huge plumes, excessive make-up, dramatic and colorful clothes etc. They also mostly just wander around in groups laughing loudly, while snarling and hissing at people. It made no sense to me. Finally I don't understand what Sara hoped to achieve in the end. Sure she knows that she has inherited a lot of her mothers powers, but she doesn't know how to use them. In Suspiria and Inferno, the endings made some kind of sense, but the ending in Mother of Tears is kind of dumb. Not quite deus-ex-machina, but not far from it.

I also feel I should talk about the gore and the nudity, because there is a ton of it. The really heavy gore scenes aren't that many but they are almost excessive. Very well executed scenes to be sure, but most of them felt like they were there just to be there. And the nudity is the same way. It's one thing for a hysterically cackling mad woman to not notice that her shirt has fallen open, but it looks like Dario took every opportunity to shoehorn in either brutal gore or nudity in most scenes, possibly both. I'm not a prude by any means, but blood and boobs for the sake of blood and boobs feels both cheap and a bit desperate, and I know Argento can do better.

There are good sides as well, from the cinematography, to the sound to the overall mood of the movie, but the shortcomings sadly overshadow the good. I could go on, but I'm worried you might think I hate the movie when I don't.

So, do I recommend this movie? Not really, but maybe? Overall I enjoyed Mother of Tears, and to be fair it's not a totally bad movie as such, it's just disappointing that it took 27 years to complete the trilogy and instead of an interesting occult mystery all we really get is a somewhat slapped together paint by the numbers horror movie, doused in gore. Horror fans might enjoy it, particularly fans if Suspiria and Inferno, but watch it with the proper expectations.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!