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Fright fans who have been waiting with bated breath for the triumphant return of Italian horror auteur Dario Argento and the long-overdue final chapter in his Three Mothers trilogy (following Suspiria in 1977 and Inferno in 1980) will be sorely disappointed by this confusing mess. Although Argento’s movies have always focused more on style than on narrative substance, Mother of Tears (La Terza Madre) contains neither elegance of style nor a coherence of plot.
Sarah Mandy (played by Asia Argento, Dario’s daughter), a young art student
in Rome, comes in contact with a mysterious, recently unearthed old chest. Deciding to open the relic, she unleashes an ancient evil, a dark witch known as “The Mother of Tears.” Soon, Rome becomes a place of chaos and death as the Mother’s followers violently await her return. Mandy (with the initial help of her lover, Michael Pierce, who’s played by Brit actor Adam Jones) must race against time and stop MOT from becoming powerful enough to take over the world. Or something to that effect. The plot doesn’t really matter, though, as there are plenty of gory moments to distract the viewer from any plot holes that may be floating awkwardly around—and there are plenty in this mess.
But where does the blame lie for this mishap of celluloid? Well, unlike other horror directors who have had their final cuts compromised by studios (George Romero’s Land of the Dead comes to mind), Argento himself is the true villain here. As writer/director/producer, Argento causes the movie to come across as a talented artist’s last-ditch effort to stay relevant in a genre that has moved on.
The acting is uniformly awful. While Asia Argento is a creative writer/director in her own right, here she plays an American student who’s obviously not American—and her performance is just sloppy and melodramatic. And the plot point where she discovers that she’s descended from the line of white witches, allowing her to communicate with her dead white witch mother, who has previously battled MOT—well, it’s pure cinematic cheese.
The Mother of Tears followers themselves all look like they’re heading to a retro-‘80s concert for The Cure, accessorized in gothic chic. Of course, this is how followers of a supreme witch would dress. Isn’t it obvious?
The gore, while copious, just seems forced and over the top: a woman is eviscerated and her intestines spill out like a factory supply of sausage links. Sex comes in the form of a perpetually naked Mother of Tears as she walks through her sea of worshipers with nothing to do but flash her breasts and behind. For many sick horror fans, the images of the Mother’s hoards, engaged in sadomasochistic orgy, are a case of too little, too late. After all, Saw V opens later this month, and those guys know what torture porn is all about.
With Mother of Tears, Argento has attempted to get back into a game that has
evolved over the last ten years. Where Romero continues to inject contemporary social commentary into his narratives, Argento simply seems stuck back in the plotless supernaturalism if the ‘70s. Suffice it to say, Mother of Tears brought this reviewer close to weeping.
