THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA (2019)

Studio:      Warner Bros.
Director:    Michael Chaves
Writer:      Mikki Daughtry, Tobias Iaconis
Producer:  James Wan, Gary Dauberman, Emile Gladstone
Stars:     Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Patricia Velasquez, Marisol Ramirez, Sean Patrick Thomas, Roman Christou, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen

Review Score:

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Summary:

In 1973 Los Angeles, a widow fights to save her family from the curse of a weeping woman determined to drown her children.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Mexico 1673 – La Llorona’s two sons Diego and Bartolo gift their mother with a necklace. When she discovers her husband Perez had an affair with a younger woman, La Llorona goes into a jealous rage and drowns their children. Overcome with grief, La Llorona kills herself. La Llorona becomes cursed to roam Earth in search of other children to take the place of her sons.

Los Angeles 1973 – Widow Anna Tate-Garcia, who works as a caseworker for Child Protective Services, insists that her boss Mr. Hankins assign her to the case of Patricia Alvarez instead of her rival coworker Donna. Anna contends that she knows Patricia personally and can relate to her as a single mother since Donna has no children of her own. Mr. Hankins relents.

A police officer accompanies Anna to Patricia’s house to investigate why her two sons Carlos and Tomas haven’t been attending school. Anna finds Patricia in a frazzled state while her home is covered in candles. Patricia attacks Anna when Anna tries to open a padlocked door. The officer drags Patricia away while she begs Anna to leave the door locked. Anna unlocks the door to find Patricia’s two sons hiding inside a closet. Anna notices a brand burned onto the older boy’s wrist. He explains that his mom didn’t hurt him while cryptically claiming he and his brother aren’t safe no matter where they go.

Later that night at St. Victoria’s Catholic Charities, Tomas enters a trance. Carlos follows his brother into a hallway where water drips from the ceiling. La Llorona appears.

Detective Cooper, who was police partners with Anna’s husband David before he died, calls Anna to the L.A. River where Carlos and Tomas are found drowned. Anna has her son Chris and daughter Samantha stay in the car while she surveys the scene. As cops arrest her, Patricia screams that it is Anna’s fault her sons died. Patricia adds that La Llorona killed them.

The sobs of a weeping woman lure Chris out of the car. Chris confronts La Llorona, who brands his wrist. La Llorona pursues Chris back to the car, but she vanishes when Anna returns.

Anna attends a memorial service for Carlos and Tomas. Anna observes a curandero named Rafael Olvera performing a cleansing ritual on a mourner. Local priest Father Perez strikes up a conversation with Anna, who asks him about La Llorona. Father Perez tells Anna the La Llorona legend.

La Llorona appears to Samantha and brands her arm. When Anna asks her about the mark, Sam tells her mother she merely fell.

Detective Cooper comes to the house for dinner with Anna and her kids. Coop gives Patricia’s file to Anna and asks her to continue investigating.

Rafael collects water from a puddle inside Patricia’s home.

During the night, Anna finds Chris trying to open the front door while entranced. The door suddenly flies open and Chris collapses. A short time later, Anna confronts a frightening vision of La Llorona inside the house.

At the police station, Anna asks Patricia about La Llorona. Anna sees that Patricia’s arm is branded too. Patricia threatens Anna with a curse by explaining that she prayed for La Llorona to take Anna’s children in exchange for returning hers.

La Llorona pushes Chris down a staircase, forcing Anna to take him to the hospital. A doctor suspicious about the injury calls Coop and Donna to Anna’s house for a welfare check. Coop mentions that the police didn’t have enough evidence to keep Patricia in custody.

Chris tells his mother that a weeping woman in a white dress hurt him. Chris adds that the woman wants he and his sister to be her children.

La Llorona attempts to drown Sam in the bathtub. Anna rescues Sam, but La Llorona brands Anna’s arm before vanishing.

Anna, Chris, and Sam go to see Father Perez. Father Perez recounts how he was a skeptic about the supernatural until he encountered the cursed Annabelle doll. Father Perez apologizes that the Catholic Church cannot help Anna. However, Father Perez refers Anna to Rafael, who was a priest before he became a shamanistic faith healer.

After examining their brands, Rafael warns that La Llorona will follow the family no matter where they go. Rafael examines Anna’s house using eggs that bleed a black substance. Rafael produces a cross made from a Mexican “fire tree” from the river where La Llorona drowned her children. Rafael explains that the tree has magical properties because it witnessed La Llorona’s greatest sin. Rafael also produces a vial of La Llorona’s sanctified tears, which he says will work like anti-venom.

La Llorona infiltrates the house and attacks. Using the family as bait, Rafael repels La Llorona back outside by splashing her with her sanctified tears. Once the front door is closed, Rafael uses seeds from the Mexican fire tree to create a protective line La Llorona cannot pass.

Rafael, Anna, and Chris are drawn to the back door. Left alone, Sam accidentally disturbs the seed line protecting the front door when she reaches onto the porch to retrieve her dropped doll. La Llorona captures Sam.

Realizing La Llorona intends to drown Sam, everyone rushes to the backyard pool. Anna jumps in and wrestles with La Llorona underwater. Rafael’s blessing turns the water holy, which forces La Llorona to leave. Anna surfaces with Sam, as well as the necklace she pulled off La Llorona.

With Sam now entranced until La Llorona’s spell can be broken, Anna and Rafael lock the two kids in a closet. However, Patricia unexpectedly breaks in to kidnap Chris and Sam at gunpoint. Patricia shoots Rafael in his shoulder. Patricia kicks away the protective seeds and presents the children for an exchange with La Llorona.

La Llorona attacks. Anna becomes locked in the basement. Chris grabs the dropped necklace and flees to the attic with his sister. La Llorona confronts the two children upstairs. La Llorona briefly becomes human when Chris shows her the necklace.

Patricia has a sudden change of heart and frees Anna. Rafael recovers and accompanies Anna to the attic.

La Llorona reverts to ghost form and attacks Rafael, who drops the cross carved from the fire tree. Rafael kicks the cross to Anna, who uses it to stab La Llorona before she can attack the children. La Llorona disintegrates.

Rafael leaves in a taxi the next day. As Chris and Sam reenter the house, Anna stares worriedly at a puddle on the sidewalk.

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Review:

Whether they receive the full benefit of James Wan’s sure showman’s hand as a director, or his less invested eye as a producer, The Conjuring Universe movies are nothing if not consistently accessible for mainstream audiences. That popcorn appeal usually turns each entry into a worldwide box office beast. Conversely, following assembly line formula to manufacture fright film fast food can cause hardened horror fans to groan with upset stomachs.

‘Exhibit Six’ in the ongoing argument between bored genre aficionados and enthusiastic average moviegoers: “The Curse of La Llorona.” Director Michael Chaves lathers this boilerplate haunter in so much cinematic slickness that spooky style drips into a puddle fit for the titular terror. You just wouldn’t want to step in it while wearing patent leather wingtips for fear of staining good shoes with standard scares and connect-the-dots plotting.

“The Curse of La Llorona” takes inspiration from a primo piece of Mexican folklore. In both the legend and in the film, ‘The Weeping Woman’ is the ghost of a mother who drowned her two sons in a jealous fit over her husband’s infidelity. Overcome with grief, La Llorona killed herself. These sins cursed La Llorona to roam Earth in search of wayward children to take the place of her own.

Fast-forward 300 years and recent widow Anna has her hands full raising young son Chris and younger daughter Samantha. Her daily routine of being run ragged has Anna sympathizing with single mother Patricia, who struggles to raise two children too. Anna’s job as a CPS social worker takes her to Patricia to find out why her two boys haven’t been seen in weeks. When Anna intervenes in the other trio’s affairs, she inadvertently unleashes La Llorona. Once she finishes with Patricia’s family, The Weeping Woman starts haunting Anna’s home. If her son and daughter are to avoid the same fate as others cursed by La Llorona, Anna will need the help of a rebellious faith healer who may hold the key to saving her children.

We’re basically looking at a transfer of tropes from one culture to another here. Instead of Maria Bello as a single soccer mom at the head of a suburban family, we get Linda Cardellini anchoring a poorer household a little closer to downtown. And instead of appealing to a priest in a church for an exorcism (although she does that too), Anna finds a curandero at a bodega who is proficient in sage smudging.

Yet it’s this commitment to compounding its Latino lineage that gives “The Curse of La Llorona” its tastiest flash of flavor. The ice cream in the cone certainly stays vanilla. At least this cascade of caramel on top keeps it from being overly plain.

And who better to script a movie steeped in Mexican folklore featuring Hispanic families than two white people respectively hailing from Germany and Atlanta, Georgia? Writing duo Tobias Iaconis and Mikki Daughtry previously wrote an English-language adaptation of Jaume Balaguero’s Spanish thriller “Sleep Tight,” so I guess that qualifies them as “close enough.”

I’m being cynically glib for fun, although this adds to the explanation for how “The Curse of La Llorona” becomes so conceptually basic. Characters have last names like Perez, Garcia, and Alvarez, whose Anglo counterparts would probably be Smith, Jones, and Miller. Even the curandero is a former Catholic priest whose primary weapons for exorcising evil are holy water and a cross. Retaining familiarity first and foremost, the film is only as vaguely ethnic as it can get away with before it risks alienating bigoted viewers.

“The Curse of La Llorona” takes place in 1973 Los Angeles, although the seventies setting does nothing except force characters to obtain exposition dumps from actual people instead of the internet. Two of those dumps come courtesy of Tony Amendola as Father Perez. Being the same priest who featured in “Annabelle” (review here), this gives the story its completely cursory connection to The Conjuring Universe. Since Anna wasn’t privy to the prologue the audience saw, Perez pops in to provide her with La Llorona’s backstory before returning later to say he can’t help, but maybe curandero Rafael can.

As helpful as Rafael turns out to be, the true MVP of “The Curse of La Llorona” is the dolly grip tasked with repeatedly pushing the camera on countless slow crawls. The production probably spent as much money on wheel grease as cast salaries, and no doubt wore ruts in the dolly tracks. I hardly fault cinematographer Michael Burgess for choreographing umpteen shots with turtle-speed creeping. “The Curse of La Llorona” features so many scenes of tiptoeing, peeking, and cautiously approaching corners that there are few alternatives for being creative with the camera.

The film fashions suspense exclusively through a series of white glove and magic cane buildups before a “ta-da!” assaults your senses. It’s easy use an eye roll to heave a complaint of cheapness at horror movies built on sudden cuts and amplified audio. But I’ll give “The Curse of La Llorona” this much. Its jolts are creatively constructed. For all their comfort in falling back on by-the-numbers blueprints everywhere else, Chaves and his collaborators don’t rely on the typical jump scares of a cat in the cupboard, closing door, or mirror revealing a shadowy shape (although those are there too). Their mischievous pops inventively inject more than a few moments of Wan-esque creepiness we haven’t seen a million times over.

“The Curse of La Llorona” hits par on roughly the same green as “The Nun” (review here). Let that movie be the thermometer for the temperature you’ll run on this outing. La Llorona has slightly more substance to her origin than Valak at least, even though both are hollow vessels for facilitating textbook frights. I’m not sure what sense it makes for a paranormal ghost to be bound by laws of physics when it comes to opening doors, but that’s the level of logic you get in a movie like this.

What exactly is “a movie like this?” One that works incrementally better opposite how indoctrinated you are in horror. “The Curse of La Llorona” covers the average ante we’ve come to expect from The Conjuring Universe’s more middling, yet still smooth movies. Veteran viewers seated at the same table on the other hand, won’t have trouble seeing right through its bluff.

Review Score: 60

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