Review #194: The Curse of La Llorona (2019)

This review was originally written in 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #49: The Curse of La Llorona (2019)

Hooo-weee, this (tenuous) addition to the Conjuring universe is a STINKER. I watched it a couple years ago and nearly fell asleep halfway through, and it took all my willpower to stay awake this time too. This movie is boring, it's lazy, and it's cheap. There's no other way to put it.

First, it's boring. SO MUCH of this movie is a whole lotta nothing. Long shots where nothing happens (including one in the middle of what should have been the climax!), scenes that serve little purpose in the plot and are so predictable as to not surprise anybody, and a plot that does absolutely nothing new. Second, it's lazy! The cinematography is uninspired and often shaky/handheld for no appreciable reason, so many IDIOTIC actions taken by characters purely to further the plot, and so many of the scenes are so poorly-plotted that something important hinges on a character seeing something that no actual person in their position could have seen or noticed, but the plot requires them to be shocked at something they saw so by gum, they're going to see it! And third, it's cheap. So many jump scares that consist of a quick movement and a loud noise, jump scares that don't contribute ANYTHING to the scene, and manufactured drama and tension just because.

Like, here's an example: a very important scene early on has the protagonist, Anna, show up in the middle of the night at a crime scene where two boys were found drowned in the river. She has her children with her for... some reason (she apparently saw fit to wake them up, put them in the car, go to this crime scene for like ten minutes, then drive them back home rather than just let them sleep through it), and at the scene, the mother of the boys shows up and curses Anna. While this is going on, Anna's son gets out of the car for... some reason (again, middle of the night, what was he even doing?) and is confronted by a ghost, who burns his arm and then terrorizes him with a series of dumb jump scares until Anna shows up and they leave. But like... not only do I not understand why the kids were with her (for the scare sequence, obvi), but why was SHE there in the first place? She's a social worker, not a forensic pathologist. Why did the cops wake her up in the middle of the night to come to this crime scene? The boys she had been helping were dead, so she couldn't have had business with them. She couldn't have been called there to deal with the mother, because they make it clear the mother was a suspect in their murder, so I don't know why they'd expect her to show up at the crime scene, and even if they did, they IMMEDIATELY arrested her the moment she arrived. So the scene was manufactured to get Anna out of her house in the middle of the night, WITH her kids, and the best way they thought to do it was to have the whole family come to a scene of a murder. What?

The one good thing about this film is Raymond Cruz. Not only is it cool seeing him in something non-Breaking-Bad-related, but his performance is entertaining and his dialogue is competently written. The plot of this movie is stupid, the individual scenes are REALLY stupid, and the fact that they want us to believe that this struggling single mother is somehow able to maintain a spotless two-story house and an immaculate in-ground pool is just absurd.

Don't watch this movie, even if you liked all of the other movies in the Conjuring universe (though if you liked them all, I have to question your taste).

Overall Rating: 3/10 Fire Tree Seeds

Best IMDB Goof: "When visiting the river where the Alvarez boys drowned, the station wagon plays a sound for the door being open that wasn't available on cars until the middle to late 1980s." Boy, I hope someone got fired for that blunder!