The Curse of La Llorona

La Llorona (the Weeping Woman) is a cursed figure from Latin America folklore. Doomed to forever wander the earth for the children that she drowned out of spite, she is the tale that mothers admonish their children with: “Be good or La Llorona will come and get you”. However when social worker Anna Tate-Garcia (Linda Cardellini) investigates a case of child abuse in LA, she discovers that for some, La Llorona is much more than a fairytale…

…another neutered shocker that will struggle to frighten even the most timid of children.

Set in the 1970’s and bolted-on to the ‘The Conjuring’s universe of mildly distracting horror films, ‘The Curse of La Llorona’ is another neutered shocker that will struggle to frighten even the most timid of children. Whilst obviously not expressly aimed at the quarry of its titular character, this is another teenage kick that is hard to beat any kind of drum for. Predictable and overly practised, its jump cuts pepper the running time as its cast are forcibly dragged across floors, through windows and out of your memory into off-screen oblivion.

Lurching like a one-armed bandit fresh out of fruits, the plot later latches itself onto the shamanism of Poltergeist II for a stab of credibility. Sadly even this will barely puncture your boredom as the inevitable gives into indifferent and many a bedsheet and curtain are frantically rustled in an attempt to effect shock where your patience was already dead. Tony Amendola as priest Father Perez gamely tries to infuse some dread into the terrible proceedings but is instead saddled with expositional duties, by providing a groan-able flashback to ‘The Conjuring’.

Bereft of any originality or any concern, ‘The Curse of La Llorona’s’ promising premise of a social worker herself becoming the target for suspicion is flirted with and quickly discarded like a one-stand that was always intended to fall over. Settling for the veneer of the lame predictability of what didn’t work before, ‘The Curse of La Llorona’ instead drowns in the tears of genuine horror fans wondering when this monsoon of tepid terrors will ever end.

Lost in the current swell of universe-building as a guaranteed means to make a franchise, ‘The Curse of La Llorona’ is a number that doesn’t add up except possibly on a balance sheet. Best left to the falling dust particles on a distant video rental shelf, this is definitely the most suitable audience for what lies within.