The Curse Of La Llorona Is A Souless Horror Film That's Devoid Of Any True Scares

      

      When a horror film becomes successful, the general rule is that the horror films that come after it are shaped and molded to not only resemble that film in terms of formula, but also meet the new golden standard of what studios want and expect from horror movies in order to turn a profit. In the case of The Conjuring films, their success lead to several different spin-off films, all of which are connected within the same cinematic universe in a vein similar to Marvel. Those spin-off films consisted of the Annabelle
trilogy, which centered around a spooky doll, and last falls The Nun, which centered around the main villain of The Conjuring 2. With those films proving to be successful as stand alone stories connected to The Conjuring universe, it was only a matter of time before another standalone attempt to expand on the ever growing series would arrive with The Curse of La Llorona. Despite
The Nun being highly reliant on jump scares in a desperate attempt on the filmmakers end to hide the fact that there wasn't anything truly scary about that story, the film still managed to be reasonably entertaining and carried with it a level of enthusiasm in regards to telling its story, that made it come off as being mildly entertaining at best. Sadly however, that isn't the case with The Curse of La Llorona. Not only is La Llorona devoid of any real scares in the film, it's story isn't developed enough to make audiences truly care about anything happening on the big screen nor the characters being effected by the plot.

      The plot for The Curse Of La Llorona takes place in 1973 Los Angeles and centers around a Latin American folk tale regarding a mysterious ghost named La Llorona (Played by Marisol Ramirez) stalking children. When a troubled mother (Played by Patricia Velasquez) warns a social worker (Played by Linda Cardellini) about the mysterious spirit, the social worker's children become stalked. The family soon discovers that their only chance for survival lies with a former priest (Played by Raymond Cruz), willing to go through unorthodox ways to handle the situation. With a premise that sounds like it carries with it much promise to be genuinely creepy and hit all the right notes in terms of scaring the audience, the film ends up being a huge misfire, that is unquestionably the worst film in The Conjuring universe yet. The story lacks true suspense and thrills, while feeling like its just coasting from start to finish with nothing genuine to offer audiences in terms of scares rather than cheap jump scares that feel staged. The characters are not only uninteresting but feel like afterthoughts, there is no one in this film that the audience can latch onto and become connected with. Everyone is forgettable, which is a shame to admit because the actors in the roles are all solid performers and deserve much better material to work off of. The biggest problem with this movie is that instead of creeping its audience out and pushing them towards the edge of their seat, the whole routine comes across as feeling extremely boring, lacking both creativity and heart. The most surprising element of The Curse Of La Llorona is that it makes the audience appreciate the effort that went into trying to entertain and frighten audiences with the other films in The Conjuring universe as so little effort was put into trying to do so here. This film is a prime example of what happens when the desire to scare and entertain become absent, and instead are traded in for the purpose of cashing in on a formula that's proven to be highly successful thus far. The Curse Of La Llorona is a movie that best serves as a money making machine, which ultimately cheats its audience out of good horror movie storytelling, leaving them with not even one genuinely​ good scare.

      As far as the acting goes, the performances in The Curse of La Llorona are about the only thing in the film that actually work despite the character development being extremely lackluster here. Linda Cardellini shines in the lead role as the social worker Anna, with her trying to create a compelling and likable heroine in the story despite the material she's given. Roman Christou and Jaynee-Lynn Kinchen both deliver solid and impressive performances as Anna's kids being stalked with both coming across as being convincing and bringing their characters to life. The trio do their absolute best to make the audience care about their characters as well as their predicament with all three demonstrating strong chemistry. Raymond Cruz does well playing a former priest, who takes pity on the family and agrees to help them. Cruz does a good job of showing his characters hesitation to help them at first then choosing to do battle with them against the mysterious force. Despite his character coming across as feeling rather generic as this type of character has been seen before in other supernatural tales, Cruz comes to work performance wise and makes the best of his character arc. Marisol Ramirez is effective as the films main antagonist, La Llorona, with her also doing the best with her performance to creep out the audience while trying to make up for the scripts shortcomings. Patricia Velasquez has a minimal role but does well playing the troubled mother suspected of child endangerment, her performance hits all the right notes and is effective with her portrayal. Sean Patrick Harris doesn't have much material to go off of here, but makes the best out of his performance as Detective Cooper. Tony Amendola reprises his role as Father Perez from the first Annabelle and provides a much appreciated and likable cameo as his role serves as a form of plot device to connect the two stories together. As a whole, the cast is one of the films few highlights with the actors all bringing their A game to their roles, despite the material not giving their characters the required depth they need to truly bring their characters to life.

     In terms of the films directing and writing, director Michael Chaves along with writers Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis profoundly disappoint in terms of taking what's essentially an appealing supernatural story, that had much potential to make for a strong horror film and completely blow it. Chaves directing never feels like he possesses the creativity of James Wan, or the filmmakers behind the Annabelle movies (The second and third films in particular) to make the film truly work on the level of frightening its audience. Rather than spending the time to build up a genuinely creepy and moody atmosphere like Wan's approach to The Conjuring movies, he uses cheap jump scares excessively throughout the film in hopes that it'll be enough to please horror fans. It'd be one thing if the jump scares were any good, here they're presented in a way in which the audience anticipates their arrival and feels no suspense in terms of waiting for them to pop out. What La Llorona is missing that made The Conjuring and Annabelle film standout (Hell, one can even make a case for The Nun in this argument despite that one sharing similar problems), is the stamp that their filmmakers put on the stories with their directing styles. James Wan's strategy much like what David F. Sandberg brought with Annabelle: Creation, worked because both directors chose to build up their moments of suspense by surrounding the jump scares with atmospheres, that were extremely spooky and effective. In addition to that, they also gave you characters that you grew to care about. With La Llorona, Chaves fails to make the audience truly care nor invest in the characters projected on the screen, actually making people bored of the story rather than find it compelling. On a technical note, the films fast-paced works as a saving grace for the story rather than harming it. The art-set decoration, costume design, and cinematography are not only effective in capturing the time frame the story takes place, but actually makes it a beautifully shot film, making the failure of the story all the more heartbreaking.

      The one element of the story that Michael Chaves failed at as a director is showing the films main scare far too many times in the story. Showing La Llorona as much as he did in the film, robbed her of the effect her character would've had on audiences had she been kept in the background more frequently. This is an issue that's similar to what The Nun had, except that film had a reasonably decent mood set up to where they could just barely get away with it. One of La Llorona's biggest problems is how repetitive the film comes across as being with the same type of jump scares happening throughout the film with no actual buildup emerging. Instead audiences just get one door slam after another along with high-pitched shrieks, and the same overzealous score being used. The concept of a ghostly woman in a wedding dress, hunting down children to replace the ones she killed centuries ago sounds intriguing as a concept, but ends up being shockingly dry when put on film. The film contains very few moments where the originality of the writers kicks in before falling into the traps of a typical horror flick such as the inclusion of a plot device in which a barrier is created to keep the spirit from entering the house, only to be broken by one of the main characters young kids, allowing the spirit to enter the house and bring terror. The latter part comes across as being frustratingly cliched as the film falls into the trap of a conventional horror flick, in which the main characters have to perform acts of stupidity in order to keep the scares coming. What is the point of elaborating on a subplot that gives the main characters a potential weapon against the main antagonist only to have it brushed aside moments later in the most ridiculous and absurd way. Instead of the writers trying to be more creative with moments such as the introduction of the makeshift barrier, they resort to the same repetitive jump scares which makes the experience feel more drawn out and boring for audiences rather than actually be scary and compelling. It also doesn't help that the audience doesn't have any characters in the film, that they genuinely care about or can connect with.

      The Curse Of La Llorona serves as being a tragic case of a horror film, one that had the right story to creep audiences out, good actors that ended up delivering strong performances despite the poor writing given to them, and strong production values that make film appear to be well-filmed such as strong cinematography, art-set decoration, and costume design given the films setting. Whereas the film had those elements to make it work, it ultimately drowns due to its failure to produce compelling characters to make the audience truly care about the story at hand, showing far too much of the main villain, and relying on an excessive use of jump scares rather than properly setting up the films spooky atmosphere and dark mood. Like The Nun, The Curse Of La Llorona is further proof of how essential James Wan's involvement in The Conjuring series is that made those films work, and is ultimately the reason The Curse of La Llorona exists on the big screen. The reason The Conjuring films did so well with audiences and why La Llorona misfires, is Wan took the time to build up an atmosphere that was mysterious, dark, and spooky while building up the characters and story which ultimately made the audience fully invested in the story. With those films, everyone knew what was at stake when the supernatural forces striked, and was literally biting their nails out of concern for the main characters safety. Whereas Wan got nearly everything right with his films in regards to making a solid horror movie, La Llorona does the exact opposite with the end result being a total borefest for audiences, that will easily become the one forgotten spin-off film in The Conjuring universe as it further expands with future films. One hopes though that if this is the best that The Conjuring universe has to offer in terms of branching out with their universe and terrifying audiences, fans will be less inclined to support any future spin- off films if their main objective is to make money off the formula rather than deliver solid scares and suspense.

Final Verdict: Avoid completely and rewatch The Conjuring films, it's much more satisfying than this.