The final film in Dario Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy has arrived in select cities thanks to the Landmark Cinema chain. My first question is; Does Landmark screen the movies before they buy the rights to them? I left work early to go to my favorite cinema in the San Diego Area, the Ken Cinema. I had seen the art house horror classic “Suspiria” in the same theater more than two decades ago. I was looking forward to Argento’s 2nd sequel to that great classic. The only tears shed in the theater were my own. This is a world class flop on a grand scale. The story is ambitious and relatively original for the horror genre. The execution is amateurish, and over the top bad. The acting is stilted, the special effects are clunky, and the music is derivative of “The Omen” and Argento’s own “Suspiria”. There are several scenes that call for mass hysteria, as the Mother of Tears has unleashed her evil on Rome, causing spree killings, rampant rape, and lawlessness. What we are shown by Argento is a group of four or five citizens arguing and fighting. It’s supposed to be depicting the second fall of Rome. What is on the screen is a slow crime night in any major city in Europe. Udo Kier shows up briefly as an Exorcist, who laments he used to only get requests for about 1-2 exorcisms a month, now he’s being inundated with them. He also takes time to explain the plot. After sitting through this mess, and it was all I could do to not walk out, I now wonder if I’ve overrated “Suspiria” all these years.
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