The Curse of La Llorona

There are times when it really doesn’t fully pay to be a horror fan. There was that period about fifteen years ago where the marquee releases were all just bland, overly-polished remakes of past classics (lookin’ at you, Platinum Dunes, and your decidedly hack-y work!), and the late ‘90s were inundated with Scream knock-offs and offerings bearing a strong influence therefrom (gag me with all of the spoons). And let’s not forget about the sequelitis-laden mid-to-late ‘80s. These days, we’ve got something of a mixed bag, but one that favors the radical edges of the spectrum: we have some inspired, moody, well-crafted offerings, and we’ve got bland, terrible, sequel-happy jump-scare fests. At the confluence, it seems, we have The Curse of La Llorona.

Springing from a Spanish folktale (okay, everything I’ve seen since tells me the legend comes from the New World, but I could swear the screen read “Spain”) about a scorned woman drowning her own children, the film has a distinctly Hispanic flavor. Appropriately and accordingly, the film is set in LA in the early ‘70s, and the cast is largely Latino. Because of the folklore angle, there’s plenty of opportunities for thematic throughlines, like water, wind, betrayal, and paranoia. Our protagonist is a social worker, a situation rife with potential, especially when child-endangerment becomes involved. Sadly, though not really all that unexpectedly, almost none of this potential is lived up to.

Let’s start out with some of the usual bullshit: In this very Hispanic film, we’ve got a white protagonist. In her defense, it is Linda Cardellini, so she’s got chops, and her character did marry a Latino policeman, so there’s some connection to the community and such, but this casting decision was clearly made by the studio so that their white demographic wouldn’t be put off by an entirely Latin cast. (I’ve seen it said that she’s got some Latin blood in her, but there’s little evidence of this in the film, if any.) Sure, lots of Spanish involved, the folk tale comes from seventeenth-century Spain, there are heavy influences of both Catholicism and local beliefs, but, yeah, let’s get a white chick in the middle of it all. I mentioned this briefly in my discussion of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (the ‘50s one, not the upcoming one), but this sort of thing does allow the character to be even more in over her head than the situation would already call for, what with having to learn all of this new stuff from a different culture, but it also further distances the audience from the situation as well, as it’s just being glimpsed by an outsider being glimpsed by other outsiders. Horror films, especially, require some heavy, close investment from the audience, helping the scares really sink in, so this distancing is all the more apparent here. Moreover, what could have been a unique tale with a distinctive subject gets watered down with the focus being on the usual character model.

Speaking of, maybe I was just exposed to some different marketing, but never once did I hear of this film crossing over with others, but there it is, right in the middle, we learn this is technically set in the strangely ever-expanding Conjuring universe. Great, just what we need, particularly when we’re set to get a third (!?) entry in the Annabelle series later this year. Joy. Now, this isn’t inherently a death sentence or anything, but it does potentially explain the decision to go with a white protagonist, as well as the emphasis on jump scares.

And this is heavy, kids. Just as I did during Winchester last year, I found myself keeping count of the major jump scares, and I wound up with a dozen. Twelve jump scares in a 93-minute-long movie, an average of a jump scare every 7.75 minutes. Not only were they pervasive, the film, like The Nun, whose fucking trailer was just a jump scare scene, stops in its tracks to prep you for each scare. No joke, any music or even sound effects are muted while something creepy’s happening, then BOOM! there we go. It’s never effective, and by the end the audience is too desensitized for anything to work anymore (not that anything ever did, just sayin’). It becomes almost laughable by about halfway through, as every jump scare is telegraphed from six light years out, and every time the action grinds to halt, things quiet down, and then we’re lurched forward with some jump. Any sense of atmosphere beyond this is washed away, and there’s no hope of it returning, ‘cause we know we’re only gonna get more jump scares down the line. Gotta love it when your viewing experience gains a tinge of hopelessness, eh?

What’s worse about this is that there is some really solid cinematography at work here. Several shots, including one in the car and one in the church, are well-staged and visually striking, and though there’s a bit too much in the way of violet/blue coloration, there’s an attempt at creating atmosphere here. If only DP Michael Burgess – who, incidentally, is slated to lens both the third Annabelle entry and The Conjuring 3 – wasn’t the only one trying this hard, we might have had an interesting flick here. Instead, we get another bland, ineffective mess of a horror property.

And that’s all that can be said of the film, really. It’s too bland and plays it too safe to have any memorable or distinct character to it, and the continued expansion of The Conjuring into some sad attempt at a “shared universe” only baffles me as time marches forth. There’s nothing to recommend the film, but, honestly, because of its blandness, there technically isn’t anything worthy of a full warning, either. It’s just there, and that’s it. It’s a shame.