Review of The Curse of La Llorona (2019) by Thequietgamer — 08 Jun 2021

By far the strangest entry in the Conjuring Universe. The only connection it shares with the other films in that world is a brief appearance from Tony Amendola as Father Perez, who you may remember from the first Annabelle. It's a fairly insignificant tie-in however, as outside of that one small reference getting made it largely does its own self-contained thing. So if you're solely interested in watching this to ensure you don't miss out on any aspect of the bigger picture this web of interconnected horror is creating, rest assured this is an inconsequential piece of the puzzle that you won't regret skipping. Not least of all because it's not very good.

This could have been a great opportunity to bring a more diverse perspective to theaters due to its use of Latin American folklore and a primarily Hispanic cast. Unfortunately, that potential was squandered by the casting of a white woman in the lead role (showing once again that mainstream Hollywood flat out does not care about women of color) and failure to use the culture in any way to distinguish the movie from your average haunted house flick. So if this was an attempt to bring some representation to cinemas, it's a pretty miserable misstep on that front.

Of course it's also not very successful as a horror film either. The titular La Llorona is a particularly loathsome specter as a result of her fondness for drowning children, but Michael Chavez was unable to make her the slightest bit scary. All she ever does is predictably pop out screaming with her arms outstretched, yank people off-screen umpteen times, or simply stand in place and try to look creepy. None of which prove effective at getting the adrenaline going.

There's also a weird tonal shift about halfway through. The first portion plays out in a very serious and self-respecting manner. It's not exactly "good," but nowhere near as awful as its reputation would have you believe. When Raymond Cruz's character shows up however, things start to get a bit cheeky. A playful tone creeps its way in and you start noticing the appearance of jokes in what I can only assume was an effort to capture some of the campiness that made The Nun an unexpected blast. It got to the point where I literally turned to the person next to me and asked "when did this become a comedy?" The pacing does increase at this point, but just when it looks like it's about to go into high gear it instead abruptly ends as the ghost is defeated in an anticlimactic and unintentionally hilarious manner. It was at this point I realized just how bad and slapped together the whole experience is.

This was very clearly just a test run to get Chavez ready to direct the third Conjuring. Because of that it's understandable why Wan and crew were still willing to give him the reigns in spite of how rushed and sloppy this turned out. Unfortunately for us, they missed the fact that nothing he put onscreen was able to raise so much as a single goosebump. La Llorona is a fright-free mess that feels like each of its writers had different visions and instead of coming together split the script duties down the middle, never makes satisfying use of its shared universe ties, and fails to respectfully depict the culture it's borrowing from.

4.