Make-Up First, Horror Second: The Curse of La Llorona Review

“Children are told to behave, listen to their elders or La Llorona will come and steal them away.
So, it’s a folktale?
To some.”
Father Perez and Anna Tate-Garcia, The Curse of La Llorona (2019)

And a folktale she remained. The Michael Chaves 2019 film, The Curse of La Llorona, fails to live up to the rest of the Conjuring Universe and sticks to the screen as nothing more than a story.

Summary of The Curse of La Llorona

The sixth instalment in The Conjuring horror franchise explores the Mexican folklore of La Llorona. An ancient spirit who was once a beautiful woman drowned her children out of revenge against her unfaithful husband. Grief consumes her and she drowns herself. Now bound to earth, looking for children to replace her own – or in some versions, she’s looking for her children.

The Curse of La Llorona is set in 1973 Los Angeles. It follows Anna Tate-Garcia (Linda Cardellini), a social worker, who checks on a family who has been under her eye for four years. Anna soon discovers things have gone horribly wrong. After saving the children, or so she thinks, Anna inadvertently draws the attention of the ancient Mexican spirit, La Llorona. Now La Llorona targets her and her two young children, Chris (Roman Christou) and Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen).

Atmosphere and Scares

Was it scary?

Despite having the same age rating as many other films in the universe, including The Conjuring 2, the film severely lacked comparison. The film hosted a wealth of the usual jumpscares, however, most were very predictable and never

The atmosphere of the film didn’t fare much better. As said previously, the jumpscares were predictable and therefore left a thick anticlimactic air lingering. La Llorona herself tampered with the atmosphere of the film as well.

Unfortunately, the ancient spirit herself never lived up to expectations either. The buildup of La Llorona wasn’t that suspenseful. However, it gave her an unnerving illusion until her face was revealed. From that moment on, La Llorona wasn’t something to be feared; she simply felt like a grown-up Scooby-Doo villain. Combined with the continuous shots of her face, there became a familiarity with her. An understanding of “this is what I’m going to see”, rather than the fear and unnerving sense of the unknown. Seeing her bare face happened so often that giving a Police Sketch Artist an accurate and vivid description would be absolutely no problem.

She could have been a much more effective protagonist and fit the eerie atmosphere of her folklore if more had been left up to the imagination. Too much was shown to the audience, and not enough was left to the viewer’s mind. This made falling down the rabbit hole of uncertainty and unknown impossible.

The Story And The Folklore

Despite losing her eeriness in favour of showing off the make-up and wardrobe, the film clung to the original folklore very well, which is refreshing to see. Her story was either changed or altered in other portrayals of folklore. Either to fit the main story’s narrative or altered and mashed together with other Folklores and Legends; rather than simply sticking with her story. In contrast, this film truly put her story at the forefront of the story and built up the rest around her, giving her tale (and her face) the spotlight.

Amazingly, despite how unscary the film was, the firm reliance on Folklore held the film very well. However, even though it was refreshing seeing Folklore taking the lead in the story, it can not be outweighed by the lack of atmosphere and overuse of La Llorona. Though there could be a potential sequel with the ambiguous ending shot, it may perform equally as poorly, if not worse.