The Curse of La Llorona: Review by @Kush_Hayes
Confusion is the biggest adverb I take away from Warner Bros The Curse of La Llorona. Not for its story or even the legend itself, all of that is pretty simple to follow. What confuses me about this movie is that it is molded and advertised to remind you about The Conjuring Movies. Its style, its tone, even its time period is all set to remind you of those movies. Yet the media going into this movie is worded so that it is not in the same “universe” as five currently existing Conjuring movies, soon to be six after this summer. And then at the very last minute and I am not making hyperbole if you blink youll miss the 1.5 second clip that does indeed finally tie this movie to The Conjuring films. So by the end of this summer we will have had a total of seven Conjuring movies.
Hmm… your opening paragraph is focused on this supernatural horror movies marketing. Is there anything positive or even negative to say about the movie itself?
This is a decent horror movie, that while you dont have to go to the theater for, being in a dark room with very good sound will enhance the film for you. Michael Chaves who has mostly done shorts before this, does a great job bringing the creepiness to the screen. He puts in a lot of jump scares, maybe even three times as many as The Nun had, but theyre all used effectively. Most of this movie was sold on two scenes: the boy keeping La Llorona out of the station wagon, and La Llorona drowning the daughter in the bathtub - both great scenes, and accompanied by lots of creativity too with light and shadow and reflections and even a great spot with a transparent umbrella during the day. I give Chaves all the credit for making a movie that kept my attention during its 95 min duration. Although I do feel we really only have 70-75 minutes of a story. I look forward to seeing what he does do with The Conjuring 3 in 2020.
The story is very simple, single mom, recently widowed, raising her two kids, and then the hardships of working full time with Social Services and helping other families. One day one of her assignments go very wrong and she ends up undermining another parents task of protecting her kids from La Llorona, who are then drowned in the [LA] River like the legend explains. This then sets the spirit of La Llorona on a new objective to take our lead mothers children. This leads to the church getting involved, then distancing themselves away from her only to have a heretic take upon the task of protecting the family. Its all pretty formula by this point and Ill give you three guesses how it turns out.
I did not stick around for any end credits, but I would bet this is not the last time we see La Llorona in The Conjuring Universe.
Three out of Six Blueberries
Rated R for violence and terror.
This review was originally published April 19th 2019 on Kush And Kai
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