La Llorona - Le lacrime del male

If I were a schoolteacher grading 'The Curse of La Llorona' I would pass it, but absolutely minimally (I believe in America they call that a C-). It did just enough to keep me from hating it and nothing more. The film started off with a semi-decent opening scene. It wasn't overly long but it did enough to set the tone for the movie. Then the tone drastically changes in the next scene, then goes back to trying to be scary in the next, then everything is back to normal, then scary again. This continues for quite a lot of the movie and it really made it hard to stay in the suspenseful mood the film was trying to achieve.

The problems with the spirit were very distracting by the end of the film. Very rarely in films like this does anything make a lot of sense, but at least they're not usually as in your face as they are in this film. A spirit that can seemingly do anything, can also only walk through one door to enter a house? An embarrassingly bad piece of writing there. The rules just seemed to be made up as they went along to fit the story.

The film's biggest strength is, as you might imagine, 'La Llorona' herself. She is suitably creepy. She was also used a lot which I liked. Often in these Conjuring universe movies the title character goes missing for large parts of the movie. That can't be said here. The film relies on a lot of jump-scares, some of them are actually done very well and caught me off guard. 'The Curse of La Llorona' does just enough to get by, but there are worse things you could do than going out to see it.

"The Bad Spell of My Sharona". "What's the Capital of Arizona?". "I'd Rather Be in Barcelona!". The metaphysical entity that has now manifested into "The Conjuring Universe" has certainly had its highs, mostly with James Wan involved, and lows. "The Benefits of Swedish Krona" may just be the lowest point that this franchise has dipped to. It's rare, especially for me, for a horror film to be completely ineffective yet director Chaves (his debut!) releases a relentless amount of jump scares that were both predictable and tamer than a domestic cat. A case worker uncovers a dark secret involving a weeping ghost known as La Llorona who haunts families and takes children. It comes as no surprise that she starts experiencing her curse.

"The Woman from Oklahoma" is frustratingly poor, mostly stemming down from the atrocious writing. The expositional script is nearly absent of any character depth for both the titular ghoul and Velma (forgive me, but Cardellini will always be my Velma). The loose connection with "The Conjuring Universe" is that the father, who explains the entire motives of La La Loner, is the same character from the original 'Annabelle'. That's it. The amount of exposition, for a plot that really doesn't need any whatsoever, is atrocious. And yet, somehow, we practically have no idea why La Macarena is stealing children and how she came about doing this!? All these pathetic explanations and no frickin' depth.

Cardellini was sensationally good. Seriously she saves the film from being the worst of the year (thus far...). Displaying a range of emotions for her children and a ridiculously commanding presence. Sweet lord, I love her. But Velma clearly needed the rest of Mystery Inc. to satisfyingly unmask La Diploma. When Chaves decides to unveil the ghost in the opening sequence in her full form, it leaves little to the imagination. This therefore results in every jump scare (and there are many...) and suspense-driven camera movements to be ineffective.

There is some ingenuity used in various scenes, the umbrella scare was minimally chilling and the long take following Velma throughout her house was well executed. But it's not enough to differentiate itself against every other generic horror film one could easily find on Netflix. The quality and effectiveness that mostly exists in this cinematic universe is not present at all! Predictable right from the bloody start. Velma's children make so many stupid choices that she should've just given them to La Lymphoma. Do not get me started on that doll sequence as the girl reaches out for it on their porch. There's plenty of choking. Eggs explode blood!? Lord, take me now!

Cardellini deserved better. Way better. It started off with an interesting approach on child abuse, but no. Should've known it would throw that out of the window. What should've been a decent mainstream horror turns out to be a supernatural disaster. "I'll See You in Roma" wept its last tear.

It has a boring atmosphere and it doesn't scare you. The nun was better. At least it's 3 good jumpscares

This movies soul purpose is to get teenagers into the cinema in the summer. It is a cash grab.

It's super basic. It is like a Mad Lib horror movie. Like "lady goes to church to see priest to learn about ______" "sound should drop out and then _____ should appear behind main character". It's really paint by numbers. Like you could fill them sentences in with so many different horror movie 'monsters/ghosts'.

I really like Linda Cardellini, she was fine in this nothing great.

I don't know if you were board with friends you could put this on but I'd just watch something better.

I actually ended up falling asleep it's shame how unscary this movie portrays the weeping woman. What a waste of my time but at least I caught up on sleep.