Directed by Dario Argento
Starring Asia Argento, Daria Nicolodi, Moran Atias and Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni
Confession time: Dario Argento is arguably my favorite horror movie director. Added confession time: There's a long stretch of his career that I think isn't even worth the paper it's printed on. It begins almost immediately after his 1987 movie Opera and continues almost unabated to this very day. The high points? Parts of 1993's Trauma and the bit at the beginning of Do You Like Hitchcock? featuring an insanely hot Italian woman getting undressed in front of a window. So in 2007, when the news filtered out that the final chapter of his "Three Mothers" trilogy was getting a release date, there were nonetheless many Argento freaks who rejoiced. I can't say that I did, because I discovered the dude a little later...but rest assurred, had I known, there would have been much rejoicing. Yay (/Monty Python).
Alas, the rejoicing was for naught, because Mother of Tears featured the Argento cold streak continuing. You know all of those hallmarks of his earlier movies, like atmosphere, creepy music, genuinely disturbing kill scenes and shocks that genuinely shocked? Yeah, all those are gone here. I knew all of this pretty much within five minutes of inserting the DVD into the player sometime in 2008 shortly after watching Suspiria and Inferno - for you non-horror fans out there, two absolute must-see movies that set the table for supernatural horror moving forward. ALSO for you non-horror fans out there, the general gist of the movies is this: Three ancient witches are buried in the cities of Munich, New York City and Rome, and attempting to break through into the modern world and f**k that shit up with a vengeance. It's implied, trust me. The witch contained in THIS movie is said to be the most powerful one, so there's your background information. Time for the show.
You know, a big part of why a lot of the latter-day Argento movies kinda suck (in addition to the myriad of adjectives listed above) is his fascination with casting his daughter in his movies. No doubt that Asia Argento has her fans out there, but personally, I've always found her to be somewhere between Christian Bale and Daniel Craig on the charisma scale. And...she's your star character this time, as American art student Sarah Mandy. The script actually does give us plenty of reasons to care about her, as she has a supposedly "quirky" personality, as well as her relationship to Michael Pierce, the curator of Rome's Museum of Ancient Art. Whether or not that's a real thing...is up to the fine folks at Google. Your setup for what is to come - a team has just uncovered an Urn containing the remains of the third titular "Witch" in this "Three Mothers" trilogy, and early on in the film, the casket containing that urn is opened and the Mother of Tears is released.
Now, Suspiria was about a group of devil worshippers making a German dance academy their home. The witch in that film had been active ever since the 1800s. Somehow, the idea of a school of dance being used as a front for Satanic activity is very unsettling. Inferno was similar to this movie, as a character released the witch from some form of ancient sleep in the early goings, which is some kind of Keystone Cops-plot development, but in that movie it worked because we felt a lot more of a connection to the characters in question. Not so here. Asia Argento...she tries, but I just can't into her. Call it glandular (Lick Ness Monster cliche #3).
So, after awakening the evil witch, her army of supernatural enforcers quickly go about raising hell quite literally and we get some glimpses of the villain this time around. And she's...something else. Played by Moran Atias, she's an incredibly hot, stacked witch seen in frequent states of undress (save for the magical cloak that was found along with the urn - don't ask about that particular plot detail, although it does PAY OFF at the end of the film. Spoiler alert). A very different beast from the invisible witch in Suspiria and the "Wolf in sheep's clothing" witch in Inferno, I must say. Atias is great to look at, but unfortunately the amusement ends there. Her helpers aren't much better. Can you tell that this movie was frustrating from a character standpoint?
Now for some actual story stuff. The script (by no less than FOUR people, and it shows) starts off with a simple kidnapping convention, as the Mother of Tears and her cult of followers abduct Michael's (that's Argento's boyfriend, for those keeping score) son and won't return him to Michael and Sarah unless they stop their Scooby Doo-level of meddling into their evil Satanic world domination plan. A fair tradeoff if there ever was one. The script does its absolute damndest to shock us here as both Michael and his son are brutally murdered by the cult when they try to recruit an exorcist into their mission, but while the scene is brutal, it falls flat.
The movie then attempts to give the first two movie some credence as it is explained that Sarah's mother was one of the characters in the first film - the shrieking woman who bit it in one of the two or three most brutal murder scenes in movie history, and also a powerful "white witch" lending this whole thing some semblance of continuity. It's not the Star Wars trilogy, but it's there. What IS worth mentioning here, also, is that this movie severely cranks up the gore quotient from the first two movies in the trilogy, and it's a stylistic shift that unfortunately bogs the movie down a bit and turns it into a geek show. Suspiria in particular was a movie that combined its use of color and its amazing soundtrack and camerawork into something truly disquieting and disturbing. This flick slathers on the fake blood and kill scenes, as Sarah and all of the various witches, priests, familiars and police detectives that she runs across go toe-to-toe with the cult.
I will give the movie some points when it comes to the final showdown, however. Sure, there's some laughable stuff on the way there, like that weird coven of witches that Sarah conveniently follows to their hidden lair. But the finale itself does redeem the movie somewhat. It managed to lull me out of the half-stupor that I was in up until that point, not the least reason being yet another shot of Moran Atias' fantastic nude body in the process.
Oh, and Udo Kier is in this movie. Best known as Ronald Camp in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective here in the states, this veteran of Euro cinema had a really good cameo role in Suspiria, and he's once again aces here as an alchemist who helps our intrepid heroine on the way to saving the world. This dude never disappoints.
I'll close this review with a little more history. Dario Argento wanted to make all three parts of the Mothers triogy back-to-back-to-back, but the lukewarm reception to Inferno back in 1980 made him put the third movie on hold and go back to making the blood-soaked murder mysteries that brought him to the dance. Completing the trilogy was the right move, and in some respects, this movie DOES deliver. It brings closure to the whole story, giving us a true sense of good winning out over evil in the finale and giving audiences a ridiculously evil and ridiculously hot big bad. The execution of everything else, however, is almost howlingly bad. Still, it's better than, say, The Room.
Therefore, I award this movie ** out of ****. End communication.
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