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54%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #4,423
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An American art student in Rome accidentally triggers the return of Mater Lachrymarum--the last surviving member of The Three Mothers--and must use her newfound magical powers to end the witch's campaign of violence and death.
--IMDb
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Review by Nirrad
Added: September 28, 2008
Finally! After 27 long years, the Three Mothers trilogy finally comes to an end. But the question is, was it worth the wait? As we all know, Argento's movies haven't been that strong after 1987's "Opera." Throughout the 1990's and 2000's, Argento had a long string of movies which ranged from OK to just downright terrible. I'm sure that when most of you die hard Argento fans heard that he was completing the trilogy; you were ecstatic and believed that this was a return to form. Well, I would have to say that you are technically right. While not as good as his earlier work, "Mother of Tears" is an average film, but still better than most of his newer material.
When construction begins by an old cemetery in Rome, one of the workers accidentally discovers an old coffin with an urn bounded to it. Noticing the crucifixes and ancient writings on the side, they call a local priest to come and examine the urn. After searching through the urn, the priest realizes where it's from, and immediately sends it to the Museum of Ancient Art for further investigation. As it arrives, a young art student Sarah (Asia Argento) and assistant Giselle (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) begin to open the urn and uncover its secrets. Inside they find a robe, and 3 statues. Giselle begins to read the statues out loud in ancient language, and this awakens Mater Lachrymarum, the Mother of Tears. Mater Lachrymarum is known to be the cruelest of all witches. Upon her arrival, all of Rome begins to become extremely violent. People fighting in the street, stabbings, vandalism and murder all begin throughout the city. As Sarah is trying to understand what's happening, she turns to Padre Milesi (Tommaso Banfi) and a friend of Sarah's mother Marta Colussi (Valeria Cavalli) for help. They inform her that her mother (Daria Nicolodi) was a white witch, who fought a powerful black witch, Mater Suspiriorum. But she was only able to weaken her, and was eventually killed. As Rome progressively gets worse, Sarah tries to use her powers, and the help of her mother to locate and kill the last remaining witch before the grand ceremony and before Rome completely collapses under the power of the Mother of Tears.
First and foremost, I was extremely excited to see this movie. I was just counting down the days until its DVD release. I refused to read anything that had to do with the movie. So I had high hopes for this movie, but also had that voice in the back of my head telling me it's going to be terrible. But, it really wasn't. I suppose the first thing I should talk about is the gore and over the top deaths, seeing how this is really what I look for in his movies. "Mother of Tears" didn't disappoint in that department. Like in "Suspiria", the first death is long, gory and just simply fantastic. Argento really is a twisted individual to come up with ideas like the first death. I don't want to ruin it, so you will have to watch it yourself. Another death involves a long spear, and it immediately made me uneasy. But this also leads to one of many faults in "Mother of Tears."
Argento used quite a bit of CGI in this movie, and it is a noticeable as an albino at the Apollo. For every scene in which fire is used, its computer generated. Half of the deaths are CGI, and like mentioned above, the death involving the spear looked pretty phony because of the cheap effects. But somehow, they even managed to make a death involving no CGI what so ever look even worse. A woman gets her head crushed in a door, and it looked like something out of the movie "Slime City." If you haven't seen that movie, the props looked extremely fake, but they also didn't have a budget like this movie did. I also believe that Argento refuses to take numerous takes. There will be a time in the movie where you should be speechless because of a certain morbid scenario, but because of shoddy props and lack of attention to detail, I guarantee you will be laughing in your seat. Once again, I don't want to ruin it as you should watch ridiculous scene for yourself.
I was quite disappointed with Asia's performance in this movie. While I hated "Trauma", she at least did a decent job with her performance. But I can't say the same here. This kind of acting is something you would see on a cheap T.V series. The English dubbing doesn't help either. As for the rest of the cast, I personally didn't really care for them either as they were less than stellar. Argento really needs to learn how to push these actors and actresses to their full potential, or at least write a script that doesn't contain terrible dialogue.
If you are going in hoping this has the same visual style and music as the first two, then you are going to be disappointed. The score used isn't bad, but its pretty stock compared to what "Suspiria" had to offer. Same goes with the visuals and camera work. It's nothing special, just your basic static shots.
I don't think "Mother of Tears" was accepted as well as Argento has hoped. When the movie was playing in two theatres in New York back in June, it was pulled from one after only a week because of terrible word of mouth. But the movie really isn't that bad. I have seen people who praise it and others who can't stand it. I personally enjoyed the movie, but I also expected something a bit more. Seeing how "Suspiria" is his most praised movie, I was hoping he would go out with a bang. "Mother of Tears" may not be a return to form, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. It's not as good as "Suspiria" but leaps and bounds better than "Inferno." And I would also like to say that Argento has toyed with the idea of a prequel to the trilogy. Now that would be interesting.
7/10.
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#1:
bluemeanie
- added October 1, 2008 at 5:40pm
This film reminded me of what old school Argento
could be. There are some flaws. The narrative
suffers at times and I don't know that I bought
most of the performances throughout. But the gore
and the violence were classic Argento and it's
something I haven't seen from him in a long while.
This is a pseudo return to form. Let's hope it
keeps up. 8/10.
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