The Curse of La Llorona

The structure of the new Conjuring spin-off The Curse of the Weeping Woman/ The Curse of La Llorona is almost like a template of any horror movie. The lazily written film directed by Michael Chaves only has jump scares to its credit and with typical character behavior and certain dialogues landing up as unintentional comedy this 93 minutes long movie is a forgettable horror experience.

The story is set in the 1970s and Anna Garcia is a single mother who is raising her two children. At one point Anna is assigned to make a report on the missing case of two kids from a family she personally knows. But things didn’t go that smoothly and the end result of that investigation resulted in Anna and family getting haunted by a ghost named La Llorona aka The Weeping Woman. The family’s efforts to survive the attack of the dangerous La Llorona are what The Curse of the Weeping Woman/ The Curse of La Llorona talking about.

SPOILER ALERT! At one point in the movie, an exorcist character spreads the seed of a tree at the door to stop the ghost from entering the house. And guess what? At the peak of the scariest moment one could possibly imagine, the little girl in the family wants to take her doll that was lying outside the house. And what annoyed me more was the way she was credited as a courageous one after doing an extremely stupid act. There was a theory that the 1973 movie Exorcist was created when people sort of took the church lightly. In the other conjuring movies also, the presence of Christianity symbols is there as the helping and healing force. But here there is no subtlety in presenting that idea and it pretty much felt like propaganda on that aspect.  If jump scares are enough for you to consider a horror movie as a watchable one, the Curse of the Weeping Woman may work for you as a passable horror movie. But if you have any plans to see even a pinch of freshness, this is not the movie to watch.

As I said, the story here is the classic template of a horror movie. There is a weeping woman as the title suggests and she has a history that justifies why she targets a particular age group. Our major protagonists come under its radar when they try to intervene in its space. The couple who sat behind me was playing this predict and win game saying the ghost will be on the top, behind the door, etc. and they always got it right. If you ask me whether it was scary enough? Of course, it will be scary if you are watching a literally dark film that will have a ghost with a horrible face filled with scars. But here, we are actually afraid of having to see that face rather than getting scared thinking about its time of arrival. And in one unintentionally funny scene, Anna tries to scare the ghost by telling the ghost that her husband is a cop. The cinematography has the typical horror movie lighting. The background score is really minimal and the editing has to be lauded here for creating some sort of intrigue even after being hugely predictable.

Linda Cardellini as Anna is really good at carrying the helplessness and alarm of a worried single mother. Jaynee- Lynne Kinchen and Roman Christou play the roles of the kids and they two were really nice. Raymund Cruz was okay as the “Tada” exorcist Rafael Olvera. Tony Amendola who reprises his role from Annabelle 2 as father Perez is the connecting link to The Conjuring franchise.

Barring the jump scares, there is nothing new or exciting in The Curse of the Weeping Woman for us to celebrate. With the deeds of the characters stuck in this scenario offering some unplanned humor to the story, I would recommend this for a fun-filled group viewing where you can laugh at the person next to you for getting scared at the simplest ghost movie scare trick or play a predict and win game like the couple who sat behind me did.

Rating: 2/5

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