The Curse of La Llorona
Ignoring the eerie warning of a troubled mother suspected of child endangerment, a social worker and her own small kids are soon drawn into a frightening supernatural realm.
Cast
Linda Cardellini – Anna Tate-Garcia
Roman Christou – Chris Garcia
Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen – Samantha Garcia
Raymond Cruz – Rafael Olvera
Patricia Velásquez – Patricia Alvarez
Sean Patrick Thomas – Detective Cooper
Marisol Ramirez – La Llorona
The Good
There are a few jumps in The Curse of Llorona that make watching it worth your time. This movie is built from one hell of a messed up story, but this is what gives it substance. Played like a traditional ghost story, it puts La Llorona centre stage to wreak havoc upon a small family in their home following a catastrophic accident. This plot isn’t too bad actually, quite different to other horror flicks where the phantom woman comes to collect a mother’s children as a form of ‘payment’ for a mistake she has made.
The Bad
This has to be one of the most tiresome horror films I have seen in the last ten to twenty years. Although its story makes it an easy watch, the entire thing feels as though it dries up just a few minutes in. It’s heavily focused on legal matters in the beginning, with the main female character becoming largely irritating when she gets herself too involved with a child neglect case. It then hops from legal to downright boring when La Llorona makes her appearance. You would think a character such as her would flood the screen with malice, but she either barely ever appears – or makes minimal impact when she does.
Something is drastically missing in this movie. The plot may be good, but the action doesn’t beef it up enough. Two whinging kids and a very bland mother simply don’t cut it, missing an opportunity to make The Curse of Llorona a jump-a-minute fright fest. As a result, this plot melts into a drama and the movie becomes something far from a horror. It is mild Netflix material and probably should have gone directly on there rather than wasting space in the cinema.
The ‘bathtime’ scene could have been done better. As shown in the trailer, La Llorona appears and helps Samantha wash her hair (that’s right – a phantom woman capable of anything – and she chooses to get creative with shampoo). Not only is the action bizarrely soothing, and calm but it results in one of the most piss-poor showdowns I’ve seen in horror history, with the titular ghoul sliding across the bathroom floor in pursuit of the young girl. It’s laughable.
And the final confrontation between the family and La Llorona at the end of the movie isn’t even worth talking about.
In the words of Catherine Tate’s Joannie Taylor, “what a fucking liberty”. I wouldn’t make anyone sit through this shit, even if there was a cash prize at the end. The Curse of Llorona has to be one of the worst excuses for a horror movie ever. Linda Cardellini swiftly went on to star in Netflix seried Dead to Me, so I assume this was just a ‘fill-in’ between jobs because the effort on both parts (production team and actors) is shockingly minimal. And this is strikingly blatant throughout the movie too.
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