The Curse of La Llorona Review
We’re now less than one month away from the release of The Conjuring: Last Rites, that means my Conjuring review series is winding down. That means today we’re talking about The Curse of La Llorona. A film that’s set in the Conjuring universe but wasn’t marketed as being in the Conjuring universe. How is this movie? Is it any good? Let’s talk about it!
The Good
The thing I enjoyed the most about the film was the cast. Linda Caradellini is the lead, she’s been acting in things for a long time. She’s able to portray this very concerned mother that’s also a loving mother who cares about her kids. Her character and family goes through a lot and she’s having to portray all of these different emotions that she’s able to communicate so well. She’s one more interesting lead of the Conjuring franchise as she feels like a more relatable character then characters from Annabelle and The Nun. As far as her kids go in the film, I thought they did a solid job. Kid actors don’t always have the best track record for being good. In this film I thought the producers got solid child actors that felt like real kids and were able to act scared and any other emotions you needed them to emote. The fun standout is Raymond Cruz who plays an important role in the back half of the film. His character has this dry sense of humor about it. Cruz was on Breaking Bad so I’m not sure what his character is like on that show. In this movie, his character has this total dry sense of humor that at points feels like he’s just phoning it in. I’m not sure if that’s his acting style that he brought to that show but it absolutely worked in this film and brought some levity into the drier and more dull moments of the film.
Another thing that I appreciate about it was that I felt like the characters were more involved with the story. What I mean by that is in most of these films, the characters don’t really know what’s going on until pretty late into the film. Given Caradellini’s character’s job of being a social worker she’s more active in what’s causing all of this creepy and scary stuff to take place. I think that’s why I found Caradellini’s character more interesting and engaging because she’s not just a random character that happens to encounter this evil force. Part of her job is trying to make sure this family is doing ok and figure out what exactly is going on. For lack of a better phrase, this has a bit of a mystery vibe to it, despite the audience knowing that La Llorona is the evil force that’s out there. I thought it was just a nice touch to this film that made it more interesting to me. I haven’t really started putting together my ranking that I’ll do when Last Rites releases, but I don’t think this film will be at the very bottom because between the performances, main character, and the active nature of the characters made it a more engaging watch.
One thing that’s very interesting to talk about in regards to this film is its connection to the rest of the Conjuring universe. I didn’t see this film when it first dropped in the theaters but I remember the conversation surrounding the film talking about how it’s in the Conjuring universe but it’s not marketed as being in the Conjuring universe. It’s a weird marketing decision because it probably would’ve made a lot more money at the box office had it been marketed more that way. When you watch the film, there’s flashbacks to previous films and a character from Annabelle is in this film in a very prominent role. I saw all of this because I kind of appreciate that it’s a stand alone adventure. The only real connection this film has to the rest of the universe is one character from Annabelle. It’s not like it had to be that specific character in this role, it just happened to be that character. All of the other films have ties or connections to The Warrens and the rest of the universe. This one doesn’t and it meant that it got to tell its own self-contained story without worrying about setting up the future of the franchise or how it connects back to The Warrens.
Finally, I thought the director had some nice creative flourishes that he did with this film. It’s nothing fancy, I’m not electing this one of the best directed horror films of all time. But for what the movie is, I thought he used the camera in some creative ways that added more creativity into the film. The ways that he used mirrors to create jump scares I thought was very creative. As of the day that I’m writing this, I haven’t seen any of the future films but I know that he directed several of the films moving forward, so excited to see how he grows and develops as a filmmaker and what he brings to later Conjuring films.
The Bad
The first thing that comes to mind here is this feels like a horror film that we’ve seen before. The plot revolves around creepy and spooky things happening in a house with jump scares that are pretty obvious and predictable. There’s a priest that gets involved to help defeat the creature. That’s the basic couple sentence synopsis of the film and you can take that and apply it to many other horror films. Some horror films have used this synopsis to make the film better, some have made the film worse, and others have done exactly what this film has done and created a pretty middle of the road and generic horror film. That’s what’s so frustrating about these Conjuring spinoff films is they create these great ideas, there’s a great hook there that they didn’t really do anything super interesting with it. In this film plus several other spinoffs there’s elements that I enjoy and perhaps with a better script and/or director they could elevate these movies from being generic to good or even great. The Curse of La Llorona fits that frustrating middle as there’s great elements in here but it’s packaged in a very generic and familiar story. I don’t know what you could’ve added to make this less generic. But James Wan was able to take horror films that looked generic on paper like The Conjuring and make them great, so I guess the key is a great director.
The other thing here is there’s plenty of times where in order for the plot to move forward and for certain things to happen characters have to make stupid decisions. There’s a lot of horror films that deal with this situation and it can be frustrating. There’s several moments in the second half of the film when both Linda Cardellini's character and her kids know about the evil force over the house but they keep on being separated in the film. Without giving too much away, there’s one scene where the daughter is in the bathtub and Cardellini isn’t near her. There’s so many moments like that in the film where if I was in Cardellini’s situation I’d be right next to my kids at all times if this creepy stuff was happening, but in order for scary stuff to happen Cardellini can’t be next to her kids.
Finally, back to what I just talked about, some of the writing for the kids is very weird. It wasn’t that they were doing stupid things in order for the plot to move forward, it's that they weren’t giving information to certain characters. There’s a time where La Llorona will attack the kids and they’ll be left with a burn mark or something. Instead of them telling their mother what happened they lie and say “I fell” or stuff like that. Elements of the plot can be resolved much quicker if the kids did a better job of communicating. I know that they’re in a scary situation so they might be petrified by what just happened but you should still tell your mom if something like that happened. The lack of communication hurt the investigation side of things because had they communicated better then the plot would be resolved much quicker.
Final Thoughts: The Curse of La Llorona is a decent horror film and addition to this franchise. There’s some great actors in here that are better then most leads in horror films like this. I appreciate that the characters are more active in the plot and understand earlier on what’s going on. There're some flaws that make the film frustrating with it feeling generic, stupid decisions, and some weak writing. This isn’t top tier Conjuring movies for me, but it’s not bottom tier.
The Score: 7.9/10 (C+)
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