Mother of Tears

Having finally seen Dario Argento's long waited conclusion to his "Three Mothers" trilogy, I can honestly say that the Italian horror based director has lost his touch, just as his daughter has siphoned most of her ability to act. The film has been hyped up since it's mention all the way to it's theatrical release overseas.


The story follows a coffin that has been unearthed, along with an urn decorated with menacing occult symbols. An all-knowing priest decides to open it, and mail it to someone in Rome. He might as well have just mailed the man a bomb. A couple of stupid women get giddy and decide to open it, leaving one mutilated by demons and the other on the run from a mystic force which she doesn't want to believe in. Those fucking realists always getting in way over their head.


The "Mother" characters that have been used in Argento's works are actually based on characters from a Thomas de Quincey novel called Suspiria de Profundis. That sounds familiar, doesn't it? Two of the "mothers" were entitled Mater Suspiriorum and Mater Tenebrarum. These names sound familiar to other titles of Argento's work, namely Tenebre and Suspiria.

I wanted to love this film, I really did. Argento has always been a weak spot for me from The Bird with the Crystal Plumage to The Stendhal Syndrome, but I refuse to accept this CGI-induced mock up into my dear Italian horror collection. Like most film maker's mistakes, Argento attempts to cover up the lack of a coherent storyline with topless witches and some amazing violence. I have been avoiding recent Argento as of late, this includes Pelts and Do you like Hitchcock?


I cannot imagine him ever capturing the eerie luminescence that resonates off his classics Suspiria or even Opera. The film boils down to inaccuracies that hit hard and shock value. I swear, when I first saw the mother throw her baby off the bridge, I wanted the entire film to be like that; shocking, incomprehensible, and misanthropic. The viewer got one of those. Do you really need me to tell you which one? One thing that could have saved this film, would have been a soundtrack by the original Goblin. It seems Daemonia is the weaker byproduct of Goblin. The soundtrack focuses on a "Gothic" feel with rippling guitar chords. I still find it hard to believe that Simonetti collaborated with Dani Filth for the soundtrack.


I can honestly tell that the script was honed by four writers. That explains some of the characters personality changes and theme splits. Several shining spots of the film all had the same motive; Show a little bit, but not enough. These scenes include, Udo Kier, Dario filming his daughter nude, a great final death scene, and a monkey whose involvement in the story is unknown, but hilarious. The instant I saw Sarah Mandy's mother's ghost, a feeling of despair hit my gut as if the human species dawned on me as being pathetic.

The story was shit, Asia's ghost mother looked like shit, the acting was shit, the ending was shit, and the special effects were amazing thanks to Sergio Stivaletti. I could not tell you to avoid this film anymore than these last several paragraphs did. I'm starting to think that Dario himself is in need of a Hollywood exorcism. Mother of Tears is the rated R equivalent of a Harry Potter film.

-mAQ