MOTHER OF TEARS is a long-awaited movie in many respects. It represents the conclusion of an unofficial trilogy its director began 30 years ago at the peak of his powers. Long term Dario Argento fans will get a kick out of this film’s assorted references to the earlier SUSPIRIA and INFERNO. It’s a return to slam-bang hardcore horror filmmaking for the director too, with substantial graphic gore and cruelty on display after the disappointingly tame THE CARD PLAYER and DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? (much of it, in an Argento tradition, directed at attractive and / or partially dressed women).
MOTHER is also a reunion : for the first time in years – and arguably the last – Dario is working with daughter Asia Argento, ex-wife Daria Nicolodi (embarrassing as an ineptly depicted ghostly version of her SUSPIRIA character), composer Claudio Simonetti and SUSPIRIA co-star Udo Kier. With this amount of expectation, it’s no surprise the movie disappoints, though taken on its own terms, and in the context of the under whelming Argento product in recent years, it’s enjoyable enough.
An ancient urn is unearthed in a sub-EXORCIST prologue that gives the flick a pleasantly retro-70’s feel from the off. It’s taken to a Rome history museum and its deadly effects become clear in the first few minutes when a female worker has her teeth dashed out before being throttled with her own intestines. It is her blood that revives – a la HELLRAISER – the dormant spirit of “The Third Mother”, also known as The Mother of Tears (“Mater Lachrymarum” to her close friends) and previously glimpsed in the striking form of Ania Pieroni in INFERNO.
The Mother of Pain and the Mother of Sighs were successfully destroyed in the earlier films, and the emergence of The Mother of Tears triggers a wave of horror and violence around the city, also drawing to Rome evil-doers and black witches from other countries. Aware of the work her mom (Nicolodi) did to destroy Mater Suspirium and guided by the dead woman’s spectral presence, Asia Argento holds the key to stopping the Mother of Tears.
SUSPIRIA and INFERNO are admittedly tough acts to follow but, when it comes down to the inevitable comparison element, the new film – weighed down with horror clichés and creaky scripting – doesn’t even come close. The barely coherent narratives and clunky dialogue at the core of all three films were easily forgotten with the first two thanks to their sheer visual splendor and directorial chutzpah. As is too common to Argento’s recent work, MOTHER OF TEARS has the drab, cheap look of a 90’s shot-in-Vancouver TV horror movie. Gone are the insane camera kinetics, painterly images and surrealistic use of color, light and shade of past glories. In a movie that would have really benefited from the awesome visual sense of SUPIRIA, we get the uninspired Argento look of THE CARD PLAYER.
This is clearly a movie made on a budget too small to fulfill its ambitions. The script calls for a sense of Rome descending into apocalyptic chaos, but the best MOTHER OF TEARS can do is depict a dozen or so extras beating each other up or slouching around like cut-rate zombies in otherwise empty streets. The rapid union of forces of evil from around the globe is represented chiefly by a small gang of unfrightening female Goths shouting at airports while looking like they should be in the audience of a Siouxsie and the Banshees concert circa 1987. Then there’s the common bone of contention for today’s low budget horrors : bad CGI. Here, the presence of typically crappy CG fire and CG demons unconvincingly pushing out of walls a la Freddy Krueger in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET only serve to cheapen the movie further. At least Simonetti’s old-school OMEN-esque score gives it some sense of scale and menace.
If you can get past the many pitfalls (plus an annoying monkey and a bizarre final scene), MOTHER OF TEARS isn’t a total loss. In fact for those willing to accept that Argento will never, ever make another masterpiece, it’s quite entertaining. Asia gives a valiant attempt at a real performance. Udo Kier is great fun to watch, as always, as a hokey Basil Exposition character who stops the movie to explain plot elements that have already been established. There are even isolated creepy moments, notably an early montage of carnage around Rome, and a striking scene in which a tearful mother hurls her baby over a bridge.
Although Sergio Stivaletti’s make-up effects often look hokey, the movie more than delivers on the gore front. MOTHER OF TEARS has the sadistic, angry gore of a young man’s film rather than that of a nearly 70 year old veteran. It showcases some of the cruelest and most elaborate violence of Argento’s career. Throats are slashed, Kier has his head smashed with a cleaver, women get their eyes casually poked out and one unlucky gal has a very long pointy thing shoved up her holiest of holies (it exits out her mouth, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST style). Whenever the movie threatens to get dull, Dario throws in some bare boobs (including – perve alert! – his daughter’s in a wholly gratuitous shower scene) or some weird sex or some OTT splatter. For that alone we can be grateful.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
