Argento is a tough nut to crack. With the Three Mothers trilogy, Argento has always foregone the weight of script and story for some dazzlingly depraved imagery, rich colors and nightmarish chaos that propels the films when logic has long since departed. Both the classic Suspiria and the lesser Inferno ignore standard narrative for the baroque visuals that Argento became known for, even if the bulk of his work was more restrained. Mother of Tears completes the trilogy, for better or worse.

With Mater Suspiriorum and Mater Tenebrarum killed in the previous films, Mother of Tears opens with the discovery of a coffin and urn chained together in the cemetery near an ancient church. The priest at the site recognizes the symbols on the urn and sends it off to a curator to be examined. Once delivered, curiosity gets the better of Giselle and student Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento) and the urn is opened. Giselle is murdered by deformed killers and their pet monkey and Sarah must escape thanks to an ethereal voice guiding her to safety.

As the story unfolds, we learn that Sarah is the offspring of parents killed by Mater Suspiriorum, and inheritor of her mother's supernatural gifts. As black witches descend on Rome to celebrate the return of Mater Lachrymarum, the titular Mother of Tears, chaos blankets the streets as suicides and murders rise and churches burn. Sarah is flung from one tutor to another, learning her role in the history of the Three Mothers, even as she leaves the bodies of her would-be saviors in her wake.

This all culminates in Sarah's discovery of Mater Lachrymarum's home and her spiral into catacombs beneath the house, leading to the lair of Mater Lachrymarum herself. There, she bears witness to debasement and violence, and must take it upon herself to destroy Mater Lachrymarum before Rome falls again and a new age of darkness is ushered in, borne by a new generation of dark witches.

So, that all sounds pretty good on paper, but problems abound. First, the script is often silly. The ghostly visitations of Sarah's mother are laughable, reminiscent of the spectral appearances of the ghost in Evil Dead 2, only this film isn't aiming for camp. The exposition is heavy-handed, and one sequence involving illustrations to depict the journey of the urn prior to its resting place looks like an art school project. The dialogue is rough, not made any better by some patchy acting and bad dubbing.

And yet, there are Argento moments of the finest calibre here. The opening kill is a good one, and the scene in which Sarah makes her way into the realm of the Mother of Tears contains some of the most disturbing imagery I've seen in recent memory. But it's not enough to save the often-plain, sometimes unintentionally hilarious movie from itself. Mother of Tears is Argento-lite, and with that style of director, you go all the way, or not at all. Here's hoping Giallo breathes new life into a legendary director's career.

This all culminates in Sarah's discovery of Mater Lachrymarum's home and her spiral into catacombs beneath the house, leading to the lair of Mater Lachrymarum herself. There, she bears witness to debasement and violence, and must take it upon herself to destroy Mater Lachrymarum before Rome falls again and a new age of darkness is ushered in, borne by a new generation of dark witches.