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THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA
Director: Michael Chaves Cast: Linda Cardellini, Roman Christou, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen, Raymond Cruz, Marisol Ramirez, Patricia Velasquez, Sean Patrick Thomas, Tony Amendola MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:33 Release Date: 4/19/19 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 19, 2019 There should be something inherently horrifying about the supernatural entity at the center of The Curse of La Llorona. If you've never heard of the being, which comes from a piece of Mexican folklore that serves as a warning for disobedient children, there's little need to worry: The movie explains it, not once, but twice. The explanation barely matters, anyway. La Llorona, "the Weeping Woman," basically acts like any generic ghost or demon in any given horror movie. That's too bad, too, because the movie's prologue gives us an immediate reason to believe that this supernatural being is worthy of our fear. The introduction is set somewhere in Mexico in 1673, as a peaceful and pleasant scene of a mother with her two young children, quickly and without any warning, turns into a nightmare. One of the sons suddenly awakens to the same scene, but his mother and brother have disappeared. As he searches for them in the woods, he hears a woman weeping near a stream, only to discover his mother, who has finished drowning her other son in the water. She leaps to her feet and rushes after her other son. We're provided a recap and the final piece of the legend later, although it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to learn that the ghost of the woman, in denial of what she did to her children, has lived on through the centuries. She's still looking for her children, and whenever she finds a child, La Llorona is driven to kill, trapped in the rage that motivated her filicide. Is it necessary to explain why the concept of this entity is intrinsically horrifying? Perhaps it's best to put it in terms of genre conventions. In a horror movie, pretty much anyone is a potential target to be killed. There is, of course, a major exception: children. It's an unspoken rule that filmmakers leave the kids alone in a horror movie, unless they really want to attempt to rattle the audience, making any such instance an exception that proves that implicit rule. In Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis' screenplay, though, children are the prime—perhaps the only—target for this supernatural being. The very idea of such an entity should be terrifying, and the fact that this movie offers nothing in the way of terror except for a bunch of jump scares should be enough to explain why it's such a bland missed opportunity. The story proper takes place 300 years after the prologue. Anna (Linda Cardellini), the widow of a cop, is a case worker at a branch of Child Protective Services in Los Angeles. After the mysterious drowning deaths of two children who have come to the department's attention, Anna's own children, Chris (Roman Christou) and Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen), become targets of La Llorona. That's all there is in terms of a plot, except for the usual diversions into explaining and re-explaining the nature of the haunting entity. Here, that task belongs to two men of faith: Father Perez (Tony Amendola), whom some may remember from a movie about a certain cursed doll (This movie crams in a connection to a currently running horror franchise with a three-second flashback), and Rafael (Raymond Cruz), a former priest who has become a shaman of sorts (The other priest describes him and his methods as "unorthodox"—twice in a matter of 10 seconds). Before the extended climax, which plays out like any given exorcism scene (only with, well, unorthodox tools, such as eggs and tree seeds, and an exorcist who's played as deadpan comic relief), director Michael Chaves relies almost entirely on lengthy scenes of characters wandering a house at night, dawdling around a pool, or just waiting around in a room. It's followed by brief glimpses of La Llorona (One clever bit has the daughter seeing her through a clear, plastic umbrella), which are then followed by the creature popping into frame or lunging at the camera with a deafening yell. Even though the entity can disappear and appear out of nowhere, it is also hindered by doors—except when it isn't—and is comically susceptible to a crucifix made out of a certain kind of wood. The lack of rules for the ghost is frustrating, because the inconsistency—which lets the entity do whatever it wants, save for when a certain sequence needs to be dragged out—means there's no suspense, only waiting for the next jump scare. The Curse of La Llorona gives us plenty of them, without rhyme or reason, and a supernatural villain who deserves better. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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