The Curse Of La Llorona is the Conjuring Universe’s sixth installment. The story of La Llorona is based on Latin American folklore.
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The Curse Of La Llorona Movie Review
The Curse Of La Llorona is the latest in the conjuring universe. This is a spin-off of sorts, very loosely connected to the other Conjuring films.
And this one is about the folk tale known as The Weeping Woman. She’s an urban legend of sorts that tells of a woman who long ago drowned both of her children in a river.
And today she hunts other children that she can steal away. She attracts children by crying, lures them in, and then kills them in some way, I guess because she’s a spirit demon.
As a folk tale, if you’ve ever done any research surrounding Laurena, there’s actually a lot there that’s really creepy, very eerie.
And I was excited to see a film that hopefully delved into that and gave some backstory and made you feel like you were watching something that was more than just a series of scare scenes. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what this film is.
I would say the first act was actually all right. The beginning was investing. I was like, okay, that’s not bad. The title booms on the screen. I was like, okay, that’s okay. Something’s happening. All right. This is kind of exciting.
And then you get introduced to the characters and you meet a family and you see she works as an agent for Child Endangerment, and that’s good. That’s a good link for her.
And some of the first few scenes that build up this woman and her creepiness and what she can do were really effective.
It’s the second act, really. That becomes just a long series of scenes where you’re building up to a jump scare, and they find effective ways to do that.
They’re in a car. The windows are being rolled down. There’s a girl with an umbrella, and she moves the umbrella around and you can see lagerona in different places. And they do this quite often.
And you can really feel like the writers just didn’t have anything to work with, which is not true. There is so much to work with in that folktale.
There is so much they could have done that they just ignored to focus on an average Los Angeles family in the 1970s.
This should have been in Mexico. Imagine how beautiful this movie would have looked if it was shot in Mexico. I mean, this is a Mexican folktale. Why is it in boring, We’ve seen it 1000 times in Los Angeles with some average family.
It just doesn’t make sense. It seems like they had gold there, like, they really could have just went for this awesome folktale with so much lure behind it and shot it in a really cool place that you don’t usually see feature films in of this scale coming from a franchise universe, but they just shot it in Los Angeles. And to me, that’s just a big missed opportunity.
I’d say one of the bigger pluses of the film, though, is the acting. I think Linda Cardellini and Raymond Cruz are both really good.
The kids are also excellent, really good kid performances, which this film relies a lot on. That because this is a ghost that takes the kids.
And so the kids are going to have a lot of screen time that could sync your movie, and they did a great job. The acting, I would say, is probably the best part of the film.
The cinematography is fine. It feels very standard. There are many scenes that look exactly like a James Wan movie, but without innovation.
This is a first-time director for a feature, and it definitely feels like he’s attempting to make this film fit into the universe without making it feel like it’s of its own.
There’s something I’m noticing about the Conjuring Universe films, and it is troubling. Just about every single one that isn’t a James Wan conjuring movie, say, for literally just Annabelle creation.
They all feel very inconsequential. It’s almost like they’re told to not be better than the Conjuring because they all feel like they’re not trying to be better than the Conjuring.
I can’t imagine the studio is actually enforcing that that would be really detrimental to your franchise, but that’s what these films are starting to feel like.
The majority of this universe is films that aren’t directed by James Wan, just feels like cash grabs.
Because the entire third act of this movie is set basically in her house. I won’t give away any spoilers, but it’s really clear that they’re doing their best to make these movies on the cheap, which makes sense.
You make horror on the cheap, you make a good bang for your buck. That’s just how it goes. I understand how that works. It’s something that I will eventually probably try to do myself, so I’m not talking down to them for that.
I’m just saying that it feels like they’re operating within a boundary with the way they’re writing this.
Like if they shot it in Mexico, it would absolutely be a better film. I mean, I have no doubt it’d be a better film, but it also be a more expensive film, probably because you’d have to go across the country and you’d have to lug all the gear out there instead of just shooting in nice Los Angeles, a block away from the studio where you’re going to edit it.
And it just feels like they aren’t trying hard enough to make the best film they could, and they’re just making very smart business choices, which is disappointing with a folktale as cool as this.
Still, the first 25 minutes were okay, and I was actually invested and I felt like I was excited about what could happen next. But then the tropes started to pile in, she visits a priest.
The priest knows about the history. The priest explains the history. Okay, we’ve seen this a thousand times before. She goes back home. Everyone in the house starts to see this thing, but nobody wants to talk about it, and nobody wants to admit that it’s real.
Despite the fact that if they just got together and talked about it, maybe they could start making a plan, and things could get interesting.
But no, we want to have more jump scare scenes. Then she goes back to the priest again and gets more exposition. And you’re just like, okay, at this point, you’ve lost me.
It was a cool setup. It’s a cool antagonist, but they just didn’t do anything with it.
I’m going to give The Curse Of La Llorona a D-Plus.
For me, this was about on the same level as the none not very scary. Just some sequences build to noises, and you just don’t really feel invested in the story. That’s the most important part.
And I wasn’t. Unfortunately, I wanted to, though I wanted to, and this could have been a lot better.
Guys, thank you so much as always for reading the review of The Curse Of La Llorona. See you next time.
The Curse Of La Llorona Trailer
Check out the trailer of The Curse Of La Llorona.
Have you ever noticed that when a film is titled a title where the Studios are afraid, maybe the general public won’t be able to pronounce it.
They have voiceover in the trailer, pronounce it for you. Look out for that. Next time you see a movie with a weird title.
If there’s no voice-over for the entire trailer, and then all of a sudden, there’s a voiceover at the end speaking the title, It’s probably because the studio is afraid you won’t be able to pronounce it.
