The Curse of La Llorona Review
6 / 10. Lacklustre La Llorona terrorises a family in 1973, but we’ve seen it all before and it’s not up to scratch with the best of The Conjuring universe films *MILD SPOILERS*
The Curse of La Llorona is a supernatural horror film directed by Michael Chaves and written by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis. It’s the sixth installment in the Conjuring Universe franchise and based on the Latin American folklore tale of La Llorona.
In 1973, exhausted, well-meaning Social Worker Anna (Linda Cardellini) ignores warnings and intervenes in a family’s lives, but her actions unleash a grumpy La Llorona, a supernatural entity who terrorises her family. Anna desperately seeks guidance from a mysticism practising priest …
The start of the film is promising and sets a dark mood, with interesting use of the ‘true’ La Llorona Mexican fable as a back story, but we’ve seen it all before and it’s not up to scratch with the best of the Conjuring universe films. It’s definitely not as slick as the best entries; The Conjuring part 1 and Annabelle: Creation.
La Llorona (Marisol Ramirez) looks scary lurking about, but you see too much of her too early on, like 10/15 minutes in! They could have taken some inspiration from The Woman in Black here, just a hint can be much more terrifying.
A good universe link included as Father Perez (Tony Amendola) talks to Anna about the Annabelle doll, as he appears in Annabelle, set in 1967. Raymond Cruz is convincing as priest turned shaman Rafael Olvera. He is scared and unsure his methods will work, portraying a realistic reaction to these events.
Linda Cardellini plays Anna well, and the kids are pretty good without being too annoying, until they do ludicrous things like picking up a toy outside the magical seed shield, when specifically told NOT to.
Speaking of seeds, what were they, and would they not need to put them at every possible entrance / exit, i.e. windows too? I thought salt was the go to mineral for warding off demons/spirits? Or is that just in Supernatural….
Best use of “ta-da” since Loki in Thor: The Dark World.