The Curse of La Llorona

The Curse of La Llorona

Starring Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Patricia Velasquez, Marisol Ramirez

Directed by Michael Chaves

The Story:
In Los Angeles in 1973, Anna Tate-Garcia (Linda Cardellini) is a widowed mother of two children - Chris (Roman Christou) and Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen), and works as a caseworker who's assigned to check in on the children belonging to Patricia Alvarez (Patricia Velasquez), and finds them locked in a closet.  She sets them free thinking its for their own good, but unknowingly allows them to be killed by the spirit of La Llorona (Marisol Ramirez), a vengeful spirit who's existed for hundreds of years who hunts children and drowns them so they can be with her forever after she drowned her own children as a human.

After taking Patricia's children, La Llorona sets her eyes on Anna's, and begins to claim them as her own.  Anna turns to former priest Rafael Olvera (Raymond Cruz) in hopes of protecting her family and banishing the spirit away for good before her children become her next victims.

The Synopsis:
In Latina American (especially Mexican) folklore, La Llorona was once a woman who was abandoned by her husband and in a fit of anger and grief drowned her two sons.  After she realized what she did, she wept uncontrollably and was condemned to wander forever until she finds her children.   The word "La Llorona" literally means "weeping woman," and it's a terrorizing figure exclusive to the Latinx community, and has been passed down orally from generation to generation.  It's an intriguing figure due to her essence - she wasn't always an evil spirit, but turned evil after an unspeakable action she caused after experiencing extreme grief and anger, and is cursed forever to roam the earth and kill children.

So when "The Curse of La Llorona" was released, I was hopeful that the film would do justice to this centuries-old folklore demon, but instead it was put into the hands of first-time director Michael Chaves, who produced such a paint-by-numbers horror cliche film that it was more laughable than scream-able (not a word, but whatever), and ultimately committed the cardinal sin of horror: it wasn't at all frightening.

The film follows Anna and her two children as the spirit of La Llorona stalks them and wants to claim her children as her own, and that's basically it.  Thankfully the film is only ninety minutes, but that's ninety minutes too long in the hands of such haphazard writers who commit every generic trope you can think of in hopes of illiciting some sort of scares - lots of suddenly up-close Llorona, tense music, people literally getting thrown around everywhere, and a good old-fashioned exorcism of sorts.  It's so generic and simple you could tune out for minutes at a time and not miss a beat.

The cast is a mix of people who really seem to want to try to make something serious, and those who are there for a paycheck.  Linda Cardellini exudes no real emotion other than screaming most of the time, and she has little to no chemistry with the actors playing her children (who themselves don't seem at all invested in the story either).  Raymond Cruz plays the former priest Rafael who is tasked by Anna to save her family, and not even he can put forth any exciting effort.  The only actors who really seemed to try are the ones who played nutty Patricia and La Llorona herself.  Patricia Velasquez plays crazy perfectly as Patricia, who looses her children to La Llorona and holds Anna responsible, and gives a valiant effort to be crazy.

Model Marisol Ramirez sheds her outer beauty to play La Llorona and goes through the ringer to make her appearance look perfect.  What I can respect about Michael Chaves is that he doesn't rely on a fully-CGI spirit (there are some moments where CGI is used, but not much), but instead returns to the heyday of horror and makes his spectral spirit an actual actor.  Ramirez went through grueling hours-long makeup preparation for the role, and her costume design is also a thing of dark beauty, dressed in white (but now an off-white due to her decades of haunting, mixed with her dress now permanently caked with mud and blood), and whose permanent tears streak down her face in black trails.  The icing on the cake is her yellow contacts that give the spirit a truly unnerving look - if only the story was told better, she might've been a truly frightening presence instead of just being around.

The story, as I said earlier, is very simple, and adheres to all the horror tropes you'd expect concerning a family being attacked by a spirit.  There's several moments where Anna is talking to her son Chris alone as La Llorona goes after Samantha, and vice versa, and Anna never seems to catch on that she should probably keep her kids together until the end.  Also, La Llorona has no difficulties in drowning other children, but seems to find it more difficult to drown Anna's kids for no good reason except for the fact that Anna's children are the main protagonists, so killing them off early would make for an even shorter film.

Much like a string you pull off a sweater, "The Curse of La Llorona" also tries to tie itself into an already well-established horror universe: "The Conjuring" universe.  The film stars Tony Amendola as Father Perez, whose name will be familiar for any "Conjuring" fan as he appeared in the first "Annabelle" movie, and even makes a reference to the cursed doll here.  However, the film doesn't really connect to the "Conjuring" other than that moment, and even that seemed to be shoe-horned in to draw more people to the theater in hopes of seeing something equal to the scares of "The Conjuring," but the only scary thing is the fact that this was made in the first place.

The Summary:
Despite a truly frightening concept, "The Curse of La Llorona" is cursed by a simplistic story, cardboard characters, and cheap jump scares that makes me think the film should've been called "The Curse of La Ll-snore-a."

The Score: D