“The Curse of La Llorona” arrived on Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD and Digital August 6th. From New Line Cinema and producer James Wan, “The Curse of La Llorona” brings the iconic Latin American legend to terrifying life in an original horror film, marking the feature directorial debut of Michael Chaves, the innovative filmmaker behind the award-winning short “The Maiden.” Here is my review:
Ignoring the eerie warning of a troubled mother suspected of child endangerment, a social worker and her own small kids are soon drawn into a frightening supernatural realm.
Review:
The Curse of La Llorona is a poorly written, directed, acted and edited piece of hot garbage that has no business being connected to The Conjuring cinematic universe. If I had to rank all of those films as such, then this one would be at the bottom of the pile, by a mile. Forget my sensitivity to seeing children harmed onscreen – I’ve gotten over it as long as it’s done tasteful and you know what? For a film that opens with a crazy woman drowning her small child in a river, the film does “tastefully” handle the murder of children as best they could, avoiding graphic details etc.
The problem is that it’s boring and stupid. The acting is abysmal on all counts. There’s a moment when The Weeping Woman (or La Llorona) is chasing after two children through some corridors, only for the big scare to land squarely on the littlest actor’s face as he looks up at the bright eyed monster woman and makes what I can only describe as a scared face the likes of something I’d see in an SNL sketch, making fun of dumb shit scenarios like this very one. Yes I’m calling out the child actor for making a stupid face, but you try to tell me differently after watching it. Even if you’ve seen it, go back and watch that part again. You’ll die.
The film has so many jump scares that you can practically time them with every interval during the intense sequences. It’s around every 12 seconds or so and it’s the same volume of noise every single damn time. It’s so grating and so poorly done, that it almost makes me hate the horror genre. I didn’t care about the leading lady or her children – I didn’t care about La Llorona though I do appreciate that they were obviously trying very hard to create some sort of movie monster that would live on long after the credits roll. Just look at her ridiculous neon colored eyeballs that pop out of her head like she’s from some 80’s TROMA film. This is 2019 – grow up.
Nothing works in The Curse of La Llorona and I don’t think I’ve seen a worse film in 2019 to be honest. Avoid it like the plague unless you’re a Conjuring Universe completionist — then I’d feel REALLY bad for you.
Special Features:
- The Myth of La Llorona
- Behind the Curse
- The Making of a Movie Monster
- Deleted Scenes
- Storyboards
The special features aren’t long but they are more entertaining than the film. I would rather see and hear the cast/crew talk about making this movie than actually seeing this movie. So if you saw the flick in theaters and you dug it, I’d say it’s worth your time grabbing the Blu-ray because you’ll get a couple good doses of BTS goodies.
Rating: [star rating=”0.5″]