Mother of Tears (2007)

Mother of Tears (2007)
orig: La Terza madre
Director: Dario Argento
Writers: Jace Anderson, Dario Argento
Cast: Asia Argento, Cristian Solimeno, Adam James, Moran Atias, Valeria Cavalli
The final installment of Dario Argento's "Three Mothers" trilogy. The film centers on a young American art student, Sarah, who "unwittingly opens an ancient urn that unleashes the demonic power of the world's most powerful witch. As a scourge of suicides plague the city and witches from all over the world converge on Rome to pay homage, Sarah must use all her own psychic powers to stop the 'Mother of Tears' before her evil conquers the world.

'Always a thing to celebrate a new Argento film, though other than his fine Masters of Horror episodes it’s been something of a let down being a fan recently. Thankfully for most part though with Mother of Tears he’s back on form. It’s the third and final part of his Three Mothers trilogy (first being the seminal Suspiria second was the weak entry Inferno). The plot’s about Sarah (played by Dario’s ever sultry looking daughter Asia Argento) who works on restoring old archaeological finds for a Rome Museum. She’s given the task of sorting out a recent found urn which contains three stone statues, a dagger and an old red tunic. Turns out the items belonged to a black witch the Mother of Tears. It’s not long before a local cult of black witches have the items back and thanks to the tunic manage to resurrect the Mother witch, whom vows to bring back the second age of witchcraft onto mankind. Hell breaks out onto the streets of Rome, Sarah seems to be the only hope and thankfully turns out she’s the daughter of a white witch and has powers enough of her own to help over turn the evil. Sure the plots all nonsense but its done with typical Argento swirling camera work and pounding gothic music the old school fans won’t mind. Some joyous gory deaths along the way best being one of Sarah’s helpers and her lesbian lover, one ends up stabbed and eye’s gouged out while the other is skewered naked on the floor. I could of lived without the jedi mind trick nonsense of Sarah being able to seem invisible and the ending was a bit of a damp squib with the Mother looking less sexy than in earlier scenes, early on she had a black cloak and one boob showing by the end she’s rough like Amy Winehouse. But on the whole it’s without a doubt Argento’s most accomplished film since Opera.'

(7½ out of 10)