DIRECTOR: MICHAEL CHAVES | SCREENPLAY: MIKKI DAUGHTRY, TOBIAS IACONIS | STARRING: LINDA CARDELLINI, RAYMOND CRUZ, PATRICIA VELÁSQUEZ | RELEASE DATE: MAY 3RD
With already twice as many spin-offs than sequels, The Conjuring franchise continues to flourish financially while sadly waning in quality. This latest entry, The Curse of La Llorona sees crispy-skinned villain The Weeping Woman lead a creaky CG spectre schlep loosely linked to the Annabelle series. Its grey, flaking antagonist stems from Latin American folklore but is best left to legend, shadows, or viewers’ imaginations as she is here insipidly rendered into a generic phantom lacking the presence and prowess of The Nun and Annabelle, despite existing within a slightly stronger storyline.
The plot kicks off in Mexico 1673 where the soon to be ‘Weeping Woman’ drowns her children in a river / frenzy, cursing herself into a child singeing spirit during a quite chilling prologue. Years later, in 1970s LA, unhinged mum Pat Alvarez (Velasquez), is believed to be abusing her kids by widowed Social Services worker Anna Tate-Garcia (Cardellini). Pat claims her children are being haunted by the Weeping Woman. Deemed preposterous, they are taken away from her and into care. Soon after, Anna and her family also become targeted by Pat’s phantom, which she must then defeat before it claims her own children’s lives.
As with The Nun, La Llorona stammers due to textbook execution. The sight of a black blood bleeding eyed hag searing kids’ skin is obviously unsettling but nowhere near as much as it should be. You can see the frights a mile off, then sigh as they land inelegantly with the numb, drunk thud of a lug stumbling backwards over crumpled trousers. The Weeping Woman lurks in shadows before hurling herself at victim’s faces, but we know she’s there and what form she’ll take because we’ve seen this stuff a thousand times in shoddy horrors that haunt the darker recesses of streaming sites; whipping cheap, jittery CGI to dilute frights into synthetic PG-like jitters.
It’s ineptly fashioned, but the script ticks along due to short scenes which maintain / retain attention and pace without stalling the swift and pithy plot. During later acts, Anna meets Father Perez (Amendola) a returning, supporting character from Annabelle, who enlightens her on La Llorona’s origins. This leads to a climax which looks set to fizzle into slapdash Exorcist swizz, but thankfully swerves to a surprisingly satisfactory yet perfunctory finale, with a little (too late) suspense and innovation.
Sadly, The Curse of La Llorona is mostly mediocre, but avoids being terrible and just about betters its bar-lowering predecessor The Nun by a whisker, despite lacking its arresting Gothic imagery. After La Llorona, director Michael Chaves is next set to tackle The Conjuring 3, so could wither the franchise further if his fright fashioning skills aren’t heightened to James Wan standards. But with more Annabelle and Nun films also on the horizon, there will be other opportunities to re-set the franchise to the levels of the brilliant first two Conjuring films, then possibly pave the way for more spin offs and follow ups.
