A Maldição da Chorona

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 legend of La Llorona is a very interesting story that had potential to become a good movie. Unfortunately, this one suffered from showing the monster too much.

The plot wasn't bad. It would have been more interesting if they showed more of how the legend started, but they had a good idea to go with. What really didn't work for this movie was showing La Llorona too many times, to the point that she wasn't scary. What's always creepy in movies like this is not being able to see their face until the very end, which they had a perfect scene to show her, but by then it was too late.

If you like the Conjuring universe/horror movies, it's a fun watch, just don't expect anything special.

"The Curse of La Llorona" is a horror film with beautiful cinematography and atmosphere. The cast is not bad and the effects are also good. Unfortunately, the story is absolutely unoriginal, indeed a great collection of clichés. The film gives the sensation of Deja vu and the viewer feels that he or she has already seen it all before, frustrating those with expectation of watching a creepy horror movie. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "A Maldição da Chorona" ("The Curse of the Weeping Woman")

Run-of-the-mill cliche horror with jump scares you see coming a mile off. The characters make baffling decisions and the ending is poor. You may have some fun if you go in with extremely low expectations.

Honestly I'm surprised with all the good scores in the user reviews. I'm surprised as this was easily one of the worse movies I've ever seen. The acting was subpar, the plot was so incredibly flat and easy to guess beforehand, the dialogue was futile and almost like something a writer threw together in a day or two.

If it wasn't for the decent effects, the mostly atmospherical suspense and the children's surprisingly decent acting I'd give this an even lower score. It's that bad. Don't waste your money on this like I did.