The Curse of La Llorona
Rating: 1.5/5
By: Nathaniel Simpson
The Conjuring franchise went from releasing some of the best movies in the franchise to releasing the worst movies in the series. Starting with the abysmal The Nun, the franchise tries to find itself in The Curse of La Llorona, a movie based on the Mexican folktale. When they could have released a genuinely great film on the folktale and bring the franchise out of the hole they dug for themselves with the movie before, they create this equally as bad movie, with such a bland story, idiotic characters, and uninspired scares, disrespecting the entire folklore.
Linda Cardellini plays Anna, a social worker who tries to find suitable home for children or take children away from unfit parents. So, when she has to visit a frequent offender of child abuse, named Patricia (Patricia Velasquez), she discovers her sons are in danger and Patricia is having a psychotic break. When the kids are taken away and then are found drowned, Anna knows there is something more sinister at play. When she starts to dive deeper into what is going on and finds out about La Llorona, she must now do anything she can to protect her two kids (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen, Roman Christou).
There is a major trope in Hollywood that I absolutely despise - bringing in white actors to play the main characters in films that are centered around themes and folklores from different cultures. That is exactly what they do here, trying to appeal to the widespread audience that will go see this film. The main character has no idea about the folklore, and has to go to someone apart of that culture (Raymond Cruz) to find out more information and what to do to protect her children. It makes no sense why they couldn't have casted a Mexican-American actress to play the mother, instead of white-washing this film.
However, even if they did change the lead actress, nothing would have changed. The story is so redundant and boring that it doesn't excite the viewer whatsoever. There were multiple times throughout this movie that I found my mind subconsciously wondering due to how boring and slow this film was. They truly didn't really have any narrative or material for this movie, and didn't give any of the characters much growth or development. I still don't really understand the motive behind the character of La Llorona, and she seemed as useless as the character of The Nun was in her own film.
At the same time, the scares are horrible and didn't startle me once. La Llorona is fairly creepy, and after looking more into her, she is a terrifying folktale character. She doesn't feel scary here at all, and the only remotely frightening thing is her appearance, which they actually did a pretty good job with. But, they try to do these jumpscares that are so predictable and dumb that it turns the movie into a laughing stock rather than a genuinely scary movie.
Like I mentioned, her makeup and costume design is quite good, and the set production is fairly nice. The Conjuring movies are usually known for having the beautiful production and character designs, even if the rest of the movie simply doesn't work. This is one thing I do applaud the filmmakers on as the movie does feel like it is dragging the viewer into the film in terms of the atmospherical horror elements. In addition, the performances here aren't downright bad, but they're simply uninspired and not really original at all.
This movie simply shows how it was all a cash grab and the filmmakers had nothing to say. For some reason they took this folklore that had an extensive history, and still decide to tell such a bland story that doesn't work on any level. It's really disappointing because I was truly excited to see what they did with this story and how they translate it on the screen, and this is perhaps one of the worst ways they could have told this story.
Comments
Post a Comment