Mark Reviews Movies: THE LEGEND OF LA LLORONA

The Legend of La Llorona, Saban Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 6, 2022

La Llorona, the "Weeping Woman" of Mexican folklore, has received a few portrayals in movies in recent years, and in theory, there's good reason. The very idea of the entity, the ghost of a woman eternally crying for her dead or murdered children (depending on the variation of the myth), is a horrifying one. In The Legend of La Llorona, director Patricia Harris Seeley and screenwriter Jose Prendes succeed in eliminating the mystique and horror of the eponymous figure in multiple, oftentimes laughable ways.

The story here begins with a seemingly unconnected scene of two children encountering the ghost on their way to cross the border into the United States, but it certainly adheres to the formula of modern horror movies. The kids wander a river alone, have a couple of fake-out scares, and, finally, end up facing the ghost of the title, whose pale complexion and howling face are the only things not obscured by the digital mist that regularly accompanies her appearances here.

The movie, obviously made on the cheap and quick, doesn't get much better than this wholly routine prologue. The rest is just as routine, although the shoddiness of Seely's filmmaking and the thinness of Prendes' screenplay only become amplified.

We meet a family of three—Carly (Autumn Reeser), her husband Andrew (Antonio Cupo), and the couple's son Danny (Nicolas Madrazo)—who have come to a villa outside a small, cartel-run village in Mexico for a month away from their regular lives. Carly and Andrew were to have a second child, which didn't survive the pregnancy, and while Carly grieves months later, Andrew just wants things to go back to normal—and communicates that fact with some heavy-handed apathy and guilt-tripping that at least makes his random, extended disappearance in the second act a bit of a relief.

There's a lot going on this village, from the cartel (which is unconvincingly portrayed as equal parts threatening, incompetent, and mostly harmless) to the constant disappearances of children. The locals assume it's the cartel's doing, but we already know it's likely on account of the child-snatching ghost from the opening scene.

While the couple argues a lot, Danny starts to feel the presence of and be summoned to La Llorona. Carly also has visions—both of the ghost and of some bloody business in the villa's past. By the way, Carly's adopted—a fact that's raised repeatedly (including twice, within the same context and with almost the exact same phrasing, in a single scene) and then forgotten, lest we keep jumping to the obvious conclusion of the character's connection to this place and the ghost.

Meanwhile, Veronica (Angélica Lara), the villa's owner who regularly crosses herself, knows a lot more about the ghost than she's willing to divulge in the first act, and Jorge (Danny Trejo), the cab driver who brought the couple to town, constantly and conveniently shows up whenever he's needed (It's particularly funny when he does so, without any form of explanation, after we assume he has exited for eternity). The ghost keeps appearing in that fake mist, and Carly and/or her son do a lot of surprisingly casual jogging away from the threat.

All of this doesn't just feel like a strident adherence to formula. There's a deeper, more frustrating sense of repetition to the plot (The kid keeps disappearing for longer intervals) and the attempted scares (lots of hands reaching, wet footprints appearing, and that pale face screaming at the camera). Anything potentially intriguing about the underlying story of the village (the cartel and what they're actually up to), Carly's lineage (The truth is saved until the very end, apparently for a not-at-all-shocking surprise twist), and this version of the Llorona myth (Zamia Fandiño plays the ghost, under layers of makeup and discount visual effects, and the living person from the past, in extended flashbacks that muddy more than they reveal) is ignored.

All the while, the movie's blatantly limited budget is made more painful apparent, especially during a climactic fight (An alarming number of people try repeatedly shooting the ghost), chase, and hunt. Those scenes, by the by, are shot day-for-night—without Seeley or any of the actors even attempting to convince us of the illusion (Everyone moves and sees as if the sun is brightly shining above them—likely because it was during the shoot). That, perhaps, is among the lesser problems with The Legend of La Lllorona, which doesn't seem willing or able to convince us of much of anything about its characters, its story, or why any of this should be frightening.

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