STUDIO: The Weinstein Company
RELEASE DATE: July 2, 2008
STARRING: Asia Argento, Cristian Solimeno, Adam James, Moran Atias, Valeria Cavalli, Philippe Leroy, and Udo Kier
WRITTEN BY: Jace Anderson, Dario Argento, Walter Fasano, Adam Gierasch, & Simona Simonetti
DIRECTED BY: Dario Argento
GENRE: Horror
RATING: Unrated

How many summer movies have you seen that include a woman getting strangled with her own intestines? What about one with a witch that asks "Who wants to eat the girl?" No, what you HOPED would happen during Sex and the City doesn't count. Dario Argento is back! One of the goriest, craziest, downright looniest horror directors returns to form (somewhat) with Mother of Tears, opening in limited release around the country, including the legendary Music Box in Chicago just in time for fireworks. For audiences not thrilled by another Will Smith summer tentpole, the return of Argento to the gothic horror world that made him an international icon could be the perfect counterprogramming. For those of us who hold Argento's best work (Suspiria, Deep Red, Tenebre) on a pretty high pedestal, just the rumors coming out of Cannes and Toronto that Mother of Tears marked a return to form for a director who seemed a bit reinvigorated by his two better-than-average installments of Masters of Horror made the fanboy in us grin from ear to ear. Does Mother of Tears live up to the best of Argento? Sadly, it doesn't. Tears feels like a once-amazing musician trying to write music like he used to and getting a lot of the notes right but missing the spirit of the piece. Argento's best work has a gleeful, gorgeous style that many have copied but few have truly captured. Mother of Tears feels like a copy, like someone "doing Argento", instead of the real deal that it could have been.

Mother of Tears has much more than a stylistic connection to some of Argento's best work. It is the long-awaited closing third of "The Three Mothers Trilogy" started by Suspiria and Inferno. It's been 28 years since Inferno, but the themes and the inspirations for Argento - sorcery, magic, demons, and gore - are still there. And he's, thankfully, ditched the more traditional storytelling that he tried with relative failures like Trauma and complete disasters like The Card Player. For better and worse, Mother of Tears is Argento unleashed again.

The three mothers refers to three witches. We met the first, the Mother of Sighs, in Suspiria and the second, the Mother of Darkness, in Inferno. At the forefront this time is The Mother of Tears (Moran Atias), an otherworldly hottie who is unleashed after an urn is unearthed in Viterbo, Italy. She's been waiting for this moment and her return sparks an onslaught of violence in Rome. (People going bat-sh*t crazy out of nowhere is the theme of 2008 with The Signal, The Happening, and now this film.)

The urn is sent to a Roman museum for examination, where it comes in contact with Sarah Mandy (Dario's daughter Asia Argento). After some demons and their monkey (yes, I said, and their monkey) kill Sarah's colleague in the most brutal way Dario could imagine that day, Sarah realizes she has a close connection the destruction that's about to come. In fact, Sarah may be the only one who can stop the reign of blood and torture that the Mother of Tears has planned for us. And she'll have some help. Sarah is guided by her dead mother (Daria Nicoledi, the real-life mother of Asia and Dario's ex-wife) in her quest to find a way to stop the third legendary witch. From here, Argento goes somewhat expectedly off the rails, throwing in as much gore, nudity, and general chaos as fans will expect.

It's real hard to put a finger on exactly what's wrong with Mother of Tears. Argento's best films have a symphonic quality, merging the grotesque and the beautiful in a way that becomes mesmerizing and allows storytelling bumps, bad acting, and his tin ear for dialogue to go by the bloody wayside. That never quite happens with Mother of Tears, a movie that this fanboy kept wanting to love, but a film that doesn't display any of the joy for filmmaking that you can find in Argento's best work. That was the thing about Argento. He loved making movies and it showed. You don't feel that in Mother of Tears. Except for some ridiculous kills - it's the goriest film you'll probably see all year - there's just not enough surprising about Argento's trilogy-closer. The script bounced around Argento's brain for the last quarter-century and it feels like it was never fully developed from the myriad of ideas he must have had over the last few decades. I wanted more turns in the story, more unexpected moments, and a much-tighter climax. It's a step up from Argento's recent work and a sign that he might yet regain the magic that we thought he lost years ago, but it's not quite there yet.