Avoid this loud, bombastic, and idiotic Conjuring-type nightmare while you can
I’m having trouble saying “La Llorona” the correct way, although I remember hearing the deceased great grandmother singing the song in Disney/Pixar’s “Coco.” So, that’s how I’m familiar with the title for “The Curse of La Llorona.”
It’s another addition to “The Conjuring” movie-going fad, released by Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, and produced by James Wan. Ever since that movie came out in 2013, I have failed to find any movie to be better than that. “Annabelle” was mediocre, I skipped “The Conjuring 2,” I thought “Annabelle: Creation” was similar to the original,” and I was not a fan of all the noise in “The Nun.”
Now, we have “The Curse of La Llorona,” which is a vile, noisy, cantankerous, lackadaisical, and routine jump scare. This is a flick that left me covering my ears from all the noise, and not caring about the story. And I wasn’t surprised to know that it’s somehow connected to “The Conjuring” universe.
Linda Cardellini stars as Anna, a widowed social worker with two kids in 1973 Los Angeles. Her client Patricia (Patricia Velasquez) is a disturbed mother who locks her two boys in a cabinet, as a way of protecting them from an ancient Mexican spirit by the name of, as I keep saying, La Llorona. Anna promises the two boys that they’re now safe in foster care, but obviously, they’re doomed, because the spirit drowns them in the river.
Now, she’s after Anna’s two kids, and they give their mother lame excuses for having burned marks on their arms. The son Chris (Roman Christou) says he’s seeing things, and the daughter Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen) says she fell. Especially since another social worker would think the mother injured them.
And spoiler alert: Patricia is the one who prayed for La Llorona to take her kids in exchange for her two boys back. And now, the family’s only hope to is to have a priest (Raymond Cruz) help rid them of this evil. Who else are they gonna call? Ghostbusters?
Why do these jump scares have to follow every cliche in the horror book? Why do they have to be annoying with their characters and dialogue? And why does they have to be so loud?! My ears can’t take it anymore!
And another spoiler alert, the priest draws a line of ancient seeds at the front door in order to keep the demon out, and the daughter leaves her doll on the other side. Unless the doll has any meaning to her, she has to make the stupid mistake of trying to grab her.
For my two cents, Cardellini was such an ear wig in “Daddy’s Home,” so she was marginally better in this than that. But for a better alternative, she was fantastic in “Green Book,” and I don’t care what other people say about it winning the Best Picture Oscar.
I’ve said this before with pictures like “A Quiet Place” and “The Nun,” there’s a type of movie-goers called Horror Moths, who are hypnotized into going to horror flicks, no matter how good or bad they are. “The Curse of La Llorona” is bad.
Half a Star
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