The Mother of TearsMovies like The Mother of Tears
- Key Features:
- Witchcraft, Supernatural horror, Ancient evil, Demons, Rome, Occult, Apocalypse, Final girl, Violence-high, Nudity-moderate, Cult classic, Giallo, Italian cinema, Supernatural abilities, Cemetery, Aspiring artist
- Tone:
- stylized, gritty
- Target Audience:
- Horror fans, Cult film enthusiasts, Fans of Italian horror, Viewers interested in the occult
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Terror → Confrontation
The Mother of Tears

An ancient urn is found in a cemetery outside Rome. Once opened, it triggers a series of violent incidents: robberies, rapes and murders increase dramatically, while several mysterious, evil-looking young women coming from all over the world are gathering in the city. All these events are caused by the return of Mater Lacrimarum, the last of three powerful witches who have been spreading terror and death for centuries. Alone against an army of psychos and demons, Sarah Mandy, an art student who seems to have supernatural abilities of her own, is the only person left to prevent the Mother of Tears from destroying Rome.
The Mother of Tears
A woman seemingly dies of fright after participating in a séance where she sees a vision of a Dunwich priest hanging himself in a church cemetery. New York City reporter Peter Bell investigates and learns that the priest's suicide has somehow opened a portal to Hell and must be sealed by All Saints Day, or else the dead will overtake humanity.

A young woman inherits a mansion, only to discover that it is haunted by witches and evil spirits.

While visiting her fiancé's mother in southern Italy, a woman must fight the mysterious and malevolent curse intent on claiming her daughter.

Virginia will do the impossible in order to rescue her little daughter who has been abducted. After a terrible accident, she has the chance to live one day more to save her. On her path, she will find out that there are worst thing than death.

A disturbed young embalmer digs the grave of his recently deceased girlfriend and brings her body to his family villa with help from his strange housekeeper. But his bouts of insanity are just beginning.

After freeing a young Bedouin girl from her unjust imprisonment in Jerusalem, an Australian adventuress, together with her devoted police detective friend, begins to unravel a decade-old mystery concerning priceless emeralds, an ancient curse and the disappearance of the girl's mother and massacre of her tribe.

A young woman in early-1900s Italy searches for a mystical sanctuary where her stillborn child can be brought back to life long enough to be baptized.

Rose, a desperate mother takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the town of Silent Hill in an attempt to cure her of her ailment. After a violent car crash, Sharon disappears and Rose begins a desperate search to get her back. She descends into the center of the twisted reality of a town's terrible secret. Pursued by grotesquely deformed creatures and townspeople stuck in permanent purgatory, Rose begins to uncover the truth behind the apocalyptic disaster that burned the town 30 years earlier.

Unable to process the death of his daughter, Detective Boyd embarks on a hunt for a serial killer who murders according to a brutal tribal ritual: Muti. The only person who can help Boyd is Professor Mackles, an anthropologist who hides an unspeakable secret. The line between sanity and madness thins as Boyd goes deeper into the killer’s world.

Guillermo del Toro presents Mama, a supernatural thriller that tells the haunting tale of two little girls who disappeared into the woods the day that their parents were killed. When they are rescued years later and begin a new life, they find that someone or something still wants to come tuck them in at night.

In the wake of a young Jewish girl’s disappearance, the son of a Hasidic funeral director returns home with his pregnant wife in hopes of reconciling with his father. Little do they know that directly beneath them in the family morgue, an ancient evil with sinister plans for the unborn child lurks inside a mysterious corpse.

In Italy, a woman becomes involved in a series of unauthorized exorcisms during her mission to discover what happened to her mother, who allegedly murdered three people during her own exorcism.

A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his armless, cult leader mother, and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name.

A priest with a dark past and a novice nearing her final vows are sent by the Vatican to Romania to investigate a nun's death and face a demonic force.

Michaela, an epileptic, enrolls in college to study education. She goes off her medication and soon begins hearing voices and seeing apparitions that tell her to avoid religious objects, although she is devoutly Roman Catholic. One priest scoffs at the idea that Michaela could be possessed by demons, but a younger pastor arranges an exorcism for the young woman.

Professor Malcolm Evans leads his archaeological expedition into the Valley of Temples in southeast Sicily. His companion and former student, Liza Harris, is looking forward to her very first dig. But Liza feels a strange sympathy with the valley and her recurring nightmares seem strongly tied to the nearby ruins. She is drawn to the remains of a 16th Century convent and its grisly legend of crucifixion. The local villagers rise to protect the entombed secrets of their ancestors, as Liza's obsession with uncovering the truth takes her deeper into the forbidden ruins and further from sanity!

A penniless woman meets a strange girl who insists she is her long-lost mother and becomes enmeshed in a web of deception, and perhaps madness.

After a divorce, Sophia moves to the south of Italy with her daughter, Helena. Their new home, an apartment within an austere building of the fascist age, is a chance for them to start a new life. But inside an old storage room hides a mysterious closet and a buried secret. After the loss of Helena’s first baby tooth, a chilling obsession begins and an apparition haunts her sleep...

Seminary student Michael Kovak reluctantly attends exorcism school at the Vatican. While he’s in Rome, Michael meets an unorthodox priest who introduces him to the darker side of his faith, uncovering the devil’s reach even to one of the holiest places on Earth.

When a young American woman is sent to Rome to begin a life of service to the church, she encounters a darkness that causes her to question her own faith and uncovers a terrifying conspiracy that hopes to bring about the birth of evil incarnate.

A young woman inherits her estranged father's estate after his mysterious death. Once she and her friends arrive at the mansion, they discover that the home is on an old cemetery, which has the power of opening a portal to another realm, which contains the creatures foretold to the world by writer H.P. Lovecraft.

By way of an unnatural urge during her Mother's funeral, Susan enters her family's mausoleum, which unleashes an evil presence to lurk inside of her.

In Italy, a woman fears her sister has been kidnapped; Inspector Enzo Avolfi fears it's worse. They team up to rescue her from a sadistic killer known only as Yellow.

A razor-wielding serial killer is on the loose, murdering those around Peter Neal, an American mystery author in Italy to promote his newest novel.

Two priests, one in crisis with his faith and the other confronting a turbulent past, must overcome their differences to perform a risky exorcism.

A woman with a metal plate in her head from a childhood car accident embarks on a bizarre journey, bringing her into contact with a firefighter who's reunited with his missing son after 10 years.

A new mother discovers a lullaby in an ancient book and soon regards the song as a blessing. But her world transforms into a nightmare when the lullaby brings forth the ancient demon Lilith.

An ancient skeleton has been discovered in Jerusalem in a rich man's tomb. Colouration of the wrist and leg bones indicates the cause of death was crucifiction. other signs, include a gold coin bearing the marks of Pontius Pilate and faint markings around the skull, lead authorities to suspect that these could be the bones of Jesus Christ. Politicians, clerics, religious extremists and those using terror as a means to an end, find their beliefs and identities tested while risking their lives to unearth the truth.....

A young policewoman slowly goes insane while tracking down an elusive serial rapist/killer through Italy when she herself becomes a victim of the brutal man's obsession.

An archaeology student photographs a mysterious naked woman by a waterfall, unaware that she is a female demon called Haggia, who soon takes possession of him via a cursed amulet.

Margherita, a director in the middle of an existential crisis, has to deal with the inevitable and still unacceptable loss of her mother.

Diana, a high-class prostitute trying to escape from a serial killer, suffers a car accident that leaves her blind and kills the family of Chin, a ten-year-old boy.

Revisiting the orphanage where they grew up, three men and their families discover a horrific supernatural presence lingering in their former home.

In the suburbs of Rome two very different souls intersect. One is the son of a restaurant owner who disappeared with his lover. The other is a young mysterious woman who has arrived from China in search of her missing sister.

Two Egyptologists, Professor Fuchs and Corbeck, are instrumental in unleashing unmitigated horror by bringing back to England the mummified body of Tara, the Egyptian Queen of Darkness. Fuchs’s daughter becomes involved in a series of macabre and terrifying incidents, powerless against the forces of darkness, directed by Corbeck, that are taking possession of her body and soul to fulfill the ancient prophesy that Queen Tara will be resurrected to continue her reign of unspeakable evil.

A group of people are trapped in a West Berlin movie theater infested with ravenous demons who proceed to kill and possess the humans one-by-one, thereby multiplying their numbers.

Emanuelle is framed by a corrupt D.A. while investigating a drug smuggling operation and has to tough it out under lock and key, dealing with a strict warden and abusive guards.

The lives of the tenants of a lower-class apartment building in the outskirts intersect on a backdrop of crime, drug dealing, confused feelings and tainted relationships, in a lucid portrait of contemporary Rome. Marcello, a bisexual former body builder married with Chiara, has an affair with the bourgeois professor Walter; the ambitious Mauro and cold-blooded dealer and his wife Simona get involved in the ambiguous business of the local boss Carmine to move up to the elegant and cruel circles of central Rome that profit from the public funds for the disadvantaged; Valeria and her son Attilio, Flaminia and her violent husband Bruno face the daily difficulties of their troubled lives. The corrupted powers of urban speculation invade a suspended corner of the suburbs, contaminating the lives of a group of lost souls,revealing the desperate world of the slum and the pitiless scene of the city center as the hidden face of the same coin.

Inspired by the true story of a family who believed they were possessed by spirits. This film follows a woman who must protect her child from a curse.

An archeology professor unearths a dangerous artifact, unwittingly releasing a creature that is able to kill with the power of its bone-splitting scream.

An American nun embarks on a new journey when she joins a remote convent in the Italian countryside. However, her warm welcome quickly turns into a living nightmare when she discovers her new home harbours a sinister secret and unspeakable horrors.

After dying from a strange illness that she suffered for three years, a mother returns home to pick up her children.

The film’s premise is about a group of warriors and scientists, who gathered at the “Oude Kerk” in Amsterdam to stage a crucial event from the past, in a desperate attempt to rescue the world from destructive robots.

Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren take on one last terrifying case involving mysterious entities they must confront.

After being accused of crimes he did not commit, a lonely circus performer exacts his revenge on those who unjustly condemned him. The act sparks something inside of him which he cannot stop and now, years later, his inner-demons have truly surfaced. Part urban legend, part tabloid sensationalism... he is now an unstoppable murderous juggernaut, fueled only by hate.

Middle-aged Giulietta grows suspicious of her husband, Giorgio, when his behavior grows increasingly questionable. One night when Giorgio initiates a seance amongst his friends, Giulietta gets in touch with spirits and learns more about herself and her painful past. Slightly skeptical, but intrigued, she visits a mystic who gives her more information -- and nudges her toward the realization that her husband is indeed a philanderer.

Sabina has a regular life. She is satisfied with her job and her love for Franco. Lately nightmares start disturbing her, and almost in the same time she discovers to be pregnant. Step by step she remembers her childhood spent within a severe middle-class family. But a big secret is hidden within her heart. Sabina wants to contact again her brother, a University teacher in the US, to try to understand what is happened in their past. What is the secret? She is determined to bring clarity and serenity in her life. She finally manages to free herself from her "beast in the heart".

Julia becomes worried about her boyfriend Holt when he explores the dark urban legend of a mysterious videotape said to kill the watcher seven days after viewing. She sacrifices herself to save her boyfriend and in doing so makes a horrifying discovery: there is a "movie within the movie" that no one has ever seen before.

A young woman unleashes terrifying demons when supernatural forces at the root of a decades-old rift between mother and daughter are ruthlessly revealed.

When a mysterious entity possesses a young girl, her mother seeks the help of two Catholic priests to save her life.

Puglia, southern Italy, around 1400. A convent is invaded by the Tarantula cult, whose fanatical and crazed members desecrate the sacred place by committing obscene and bloody acts.

When her teen daughter displays increasingly disturbing behavior after a near death experience, a mother becomes convinced the girl brought something evil back from the other side.

After a doctor kills his mistress and himself while researching the mysterious previous owner of his Boston home, his colleague, Dr. Norman Boyle, takes over his studies and moves his family into the Boston mansion. Soon after, Boyle's young son Bob becomes plagued by visions of a young girl, who warns him of the danger within the house.

A single mother and a childless morgue technician are bound together by their relationship to a little girl they have reanimated from the dead.

Titus Andronicus returns from the wars and sees his sons and daughters taken from him, one by one. Shakespeare's goriest and earliest tragedy.

In a highly secured vault deep within the walls of Vatican City, the Catholic Church holds thousands of old films and video footage documenting exorcisms/supposed exorcisms and other unexplained religious phenomena they feel the world is not ready to see. This is the first tape - Case 83-G - stolen from these archives and exposed to the public by an anonymous source.

A newsman works with a blind puzzle-solver to uncover a deadly conspiracy linked to a genetic research facility.

Francesca, an Italian-American writer who lives in New York, must return to Rome to retrieve her aging mother. There, the ghosts of her childhood will come to her through her mother's art.

Though safely entombed in a crypt deep beneath the unforgiving desert, an ancient queen whose destiny was unjustly taken from her is awakened in our current day, bringing with her malevolence grown over millennia, and terrors that defy human comprehension.

Winter, 1843. A young woman is under investigation following the mysterious death of her family's matriarch. Her recollection of the events sheds new light on the ageless forces behind the tragedy.

A middle-aged woman, traumatized from the death of her adulterous lover, moves into a room at a New Orleans boarding house where the blind landlord becomes suspicious to her activities of continuing her affair with her dead lover.

Adopted together after a tough childhood in an orphanage, Nica and Rigel realize that unexpected but irresistible feelings pull them together.

A graphic portrayal of the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life.

A young, lonely woman is consumed by her deepest and darkest desires after tragedy strikes her quiet country life.

An American writer living in Rome witnesses an attempted murder that is connected to an ongoing killing spree in the city and conducts his own investigation, despite he and his girlfriend being targeted by the killer.

A woman brings her family back to her childhood home, which used to be an orphanage, intent on reopening it. Before long, her son starts to communicate with a new invisible friend.

A young woman’s quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tortured her as a child leads her and her best friend, also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity.

In Rome, the Cassamortari are people who work in the funeral business. The Pasti family's agency was founded by Giuseppe, who is willing to do anything to turn a corpse into money, preferably in black.

A young restorer travels to a small village to restore a medieval painting to its former glory. She will put her life in danger due to a curse attached to the painting.

Based on the plot of Euripides' Medea. Medea centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman.

A distraught mother suspects her teenage son is a psychopath who may shoot up his high school, but when he outsmarts the mental healthcare system she is forced to take matters into her own hands.

Barbara O’Brien, an Irish Catholic mother, has her life turned upside-down when her son, a freshman in college, is involved in a tragic hazing incident. Taking justice into her own hands, she travels across the country recording mothers who have lost sons to hazing in an effort to prove the university’s liability. When she is confronted by corruption and cover ups, she seeks revenge on the one person she finds truly responsible, proving that hell hath no fury like a mother scorned.

A cursed country estate is besieged by horny houseguests, undead Etruscans, and the unusual relationship between a mother and her young son.

After a car accident that caused the loss of her baby, Jane experiences an increasing amount of nightmares that shake her to her core. After seeking professional help, her haunting visions turn into an even more frightening reality, one full of black magic, blood orgies, and murder.

After participating in a séance, young Laura begins to behave strangely. Alarmed, her parents ask Father Olmedo, one of the few exorcists authorized by the Vatican to intervene in cases of demonic possession, for help.

Valeria's joy at becoming a first-time mother is quickly taken away when she's cursed by a sinister entity. As danger closes in, she's forced deeper into a chilling world of dark magic that threatens to consume her.

Bayonetta is an ancient witch who awakens from a five hundred-year slumber with no memory of her life. Armed with a gun in each limb, she embarks on a journey to rediscover her past, defeating all bloodthirsty angels that stand in her way.

A young woman struggling with addiction comes into possession of an ancient puzzle box, unaware that its purpose is to summon the Cenobites, a group of sadistic supernatural beings from another dimension.

When young and successful reporter Jamie finds out that her sister has died in mysterious circumstances, she travels to Singapore to uncover the truth. There, she discovers multiple deaths linked to her sister's and must join forces with her sister's husband in order to defeat a demonic entity that is using new technology to complete an ancient mission.

An elderly heiress is killed by her husband who wants control of her fortunes. What ensues is an all-out murder spree as relatives and friends attempt to reduce the inheritance playing field, complicated by some teenagers who decide to camp out in a dilapidated building on the estate.

Set in the last days of World War II, a small band of Russian soldiers led by intelligence officer Brana Vasilyeva, who is tasked with trafficking the remains of Hitler back to Stalin in Russia. En route, the unit is attacked by German ‘Werewolf’ partisans and picked off one-by-one. Brana leads her surviving comrades in a last stand to ensure their ‘cargo’ doesn’t fall into the hands of those who would see it buried in order to hide the truth forever.

After reuniting with his first mentor Bruno and receiving his latest mission, an exiled Ciro is left to fearlessly confront whatever comes his way, navigating a new chapter of gang warfare while grappling with devastating memories of loss and trauma. Weaving between his past as an orphan in Naples' cruel underworld and present as a hardened, cunning assassin with nothing left to lose, Ciro is plunged into the cold, dark depths of a world where immortality is just another form of damnation.

A group of college friends discover a 15th century coffin that allows them to experience the world as ghosts. While their first adventures in the spirit world are playful and innocent, the "Box of Shadows" soon brings out the group's most dangerous impulses and desires. The friends find themselves pulled into a world of evil where they learn the line between life and death is there for a reason.

A rich, mentally-unstable man with a penchant for playing deadly S&M games with women who resemble his dead wife, sparks off a chain of bizarre events after getting remarried.

Ana is confronted with body and desire at three key moments of her life. As a young girl, she brings her dead grandpa back to life. In her puberty, she discovers the power of decay and sexuality. Finally, she wrestles with loss and loneliness when she returns to her parental home, now derelict.

After the death of her beloved grandmother, eight-year-old Nelly meets a strangely familiar girl her own age in the woods. Instantly forming a connection with this mysterious new friend, Nelly embarks on a fantastical journey of discovery which helps her come to terms with this newfound loss.

An English pianist living in Rome witnesses the brutal murder of his psychic neighbor. With the help of a tenacious young reporter, he tries to discover the killer using very unconventional methods. The two are soon drawn into a shocking web of dementia and violence.

The story of Dulce, a mother who has encounters with apparitions inside her old house. She must decipher a mystery that could trigger a prophecy: the death of her family.

Years ago, a cruel and merciless nun turned a boarding school into a living hell for her students until they could no longer bear the abuse, and she mysteriously disappeared. Now the alumnae are being brutally murdered one by one.

A young Italian actress embarks on a self-destructive spree of sex, drugs and other excess while doing some soul searching to find the path for redemption.

In the Middle Ages, Federico, a soldier, visits the convent in Bobbio, where Sister Benedetta is facing charges of witchery for seducing Fabrizio, Federico’s twin brother, and making him betray his priestly mission. Federico hopes to secure his brother a burial on consecrated grounds. In modern times, Federico Mai, a Minister inspector, knocks on the doors of the very same convent, in order to broker a sale of the property to a Russian millionaire. Unbeknownst to him, a mysterious "Count" lives there.

After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.

After moving from their home to an apartment building, a new terror awaits Rini’s family.

Rumored to have been lost, Antrum appears as a cursed film from the 1970s. Viewers are warned to proceed with caution. It’s said to be a story about a young boy and girl who enter the forest in an attempt to save the soul of their recently deceased pet. They journey to “The Antrum,” the very spot the devil landed after being cast out of heaven. There, the children begin to dig a hole to hell.

Gabriel Chevalier, 45 years old, is an ex-policeman. Unemployed, lonely and depressed,he lives like a ghost and hardly takes care of his only teenage child Juliette. One day, by pure chance, he finds a suspicious but extremely well paid job: his daily mission consists of delivering a briefcase exactly where he is told. The only rule being to never open it. These deliveries will bring him to meet weird people in strange places. Gradually, his cop instinct resurfaces...

A group of friends discover an ancient book, the Necronomicon, the Book of the Deads. They discover that the book is a link between our world and the world of ancients creatures, older than our civilizations.

Four corrupted fascist libertines round up 9 teenage boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of sadistic physical, mental and sexual torture.

Scarred for life after a harrowing near-death experience, emotionally fragile mother-to-be Sarah is still struggling to come to terms with her loss. Overcome with silent grief, Sarah now seeks solace in work; however, she is on a collision course with sheer terror when a knock at the door in the dead of night chills her bones to the marrow. Now, the raven-haired, late-night visitor in black wants something precious from Sarah, and will stop at nothing to get it.

