{"id":9923,"date":"2024-12-10T23:56:31","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9923"},"modified":"2024-12-10T23:56:31","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:56:31","slug":"the-curse-of-la-llorona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/12\/10\/the-curse-of-la-llorona\/","title":{"rendered":"The Curse of La Llorona"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Curse of La Llorona<\/strong> (2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and terror)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Michael Chaves\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Joseph Bishara\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Michael Burgess\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 19, 2019 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Patricia Velasquez, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen, Roman Christou, Marisol Ramirez, Sean Patrick Thomas, Tony Amendola.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $54.7M (US)\/$123.1M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0In Mexican folklore, La Llorona (\u201cThe Weeping Woman\u201d) is the ghost of a beautiful woman who drowned her two sons after her husband left her for a younger woman. Legend has it that great misfortune befalls those who hear her cries. It\u2019s said that she kidnaps wandering children at night and drowns them like she did her own. There is no evidence that the events that inspired the tale actually happened, but it makes for a hell of a scary ghost story, one that parents in Latin American countries use to keep their kids from staying out too late. If only The Curse of La Llorona<\/strong> lived up to the legend.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s been suggested on more than one occasion that I set my standards too high when it comes to horror movies. It\u2019s true, I admit it, but can you blame me? Have you seen the sorry state of horror in the last 20 or so years? There have been a few good ones- e.g. The Ring, Freddy vs. Jason and It Follows- but most have been crap. Although part of the Conjuring universe, I had no reason to expect The Curse of La Llorona<\/strong> to be any good. I mean, the trailer for The Nun looked promising and look how that turned out. I figured The Curse of La Llorona<\/strong> would be mediocre at best. It looked like the same-old-same-old with its CGI effects, manufactured jump-scares and sudden loud noises. I\u2019m pleased to say it\u2019s a little better than mediocre.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Director Michael Chaves, making his feature film debut, kicks things off by briefing us on the legend of La Llorona (pronounced Yor-oh-na) in a prologue set in 1673. The action then jumps ahead 300 years where we meet widowed mother Anna (Cardellini, Green Book) and her two young children, Chris (Christou) and Sam (Kinchen, Self\/less). She\u2019s a social worker who\u2019s asked to check on the welfare of two boys that seemingly disappeared. It turns out the mother (Velasquez, The Mummy Returns) locked them in the closet for their own protection. Anna, believing the mother to be insane, takes the boys to a shelter where they\u2019ll supposedly be safe. Within hours, they\u2019re found drowned in a river.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The distraught mother, who blames Anna for her sons\u2019 deaths, wishes the same on the well-meaning but spiritually clueless social worker. It isn\u2019t long until La Llorona sets her sights on Chris and Sam. Anna goes to the church (Catholic, of course) for help. The priest (Amendola), the same one from 2014\u2019s Annabelle, refers her to Rafael (Cruz, Alien: Resurrection), a curandero<\/em> (native healer or witch doctor) better qualified to deal with this sort of thing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I grew up on 1980s horror flicks. In high school, there was nothing I liked better than spending a weekend afternoon at the cinema watching scary movies. Even crappy ones like The Power, The Prey and The Final Terror were kind of fun. The Curse of La Llorona<\/strong> comes closer to recapturing the spirit of B-level horror movies than almost any I\u2019ve seen in the new millennium. At a cost of $9 million, it\u2019s low-budget by today\u2019s standards. I can easily see it as the bottom half of a double bill. While better than expected, it\u2019s NOT a new horror movie classic by any stretch of the imagination. It has a few genuinely eerie scenes including a zoom shot right out of The Evil Dead, but it\u2019s not all that scary. The \u201cBOO!\u201d scenes are completely predictable; you know they\u2019re coming before they come. Once again, it\u2019s proven that volume does not a scary scene make. Making a scene louder does NOT guarantee the viewer will jump higher. When will filmmakers figure this out? The CGI effects are just that, CGI. In terms of quality, it\u2019s neither good nor bad CGI; it\u2019s actually fairly standard. The same can be said of the plotline. We\u2019ve seen this story before. The only real difference is that it taps into Mexican folklore which is a good thing since people of Latin-American descent have long been underserved by the horror genre. If only The Curse of La Llorona<\/strong> was a better movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Chaves brings genuine atmosphere to The Curse of La Llorona<\/strong> even if it doesn\u2019t always feel period authentic. It\u2019s set in the 70s, but it doesn\u2019t have the same 70s feel as the two Conjuring movies or Ouija: Origin of Evil. I blame the CGI; that can be a real disconnect at times. As for the acting, there\u2019s not a whole lot to say. The actors play their roles fairly convincingly. Cardellini looks sufficiently terrified as she attempts to protect her young from an evil entity. It\u2019s believable when she jumps into fiercely protective mode. Perhaps the nicest thing I can say here is that there\u2019s not a single bad performance among the cast.<\/p>\n

\u00a0That The Curse of La Llorona<\/strong> is better than mediocre is a gift. It could have easily sucked like so many recent fright flicks. I\u2019m always glad when one of these movies gets an R rating. Horror is an R-rated genre. Watering it down for a more teen-friendly PG-13 defeats the purpose. I say always go for the R. That being said, I\u2019m not entirely sure exactly why The Curse of La Llorona<\/strong> is rated R. Maybe it\u2019s because young children get killed. Oh well, I guess it doesn\u2019t really matter. The movie knows its intended audience and serves up enough thrills to make it worth the price of a matinee ticket.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Curse of La Llorona (2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and terror)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Michael Chaves\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Joseph Bishara\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Michael Burgess\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 19, 2019 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Patricia Velasquez, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen, Roman Christou, Marisol Ramirez, Sean Patrick Thomas, Tony Amendola.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10270,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/The-Curse-of-La-Llorona-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9923"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10272,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9923\/revisions\/10272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}