"Have They Heard Her Crying? Have They Felt The Sting Of Her Tears? They Will, And She Will Come For Them..."
Winning the award for most unpronounceable title of the year so far, The Conjuring universe returns once again to the big screen like a distressed, lost puppy eager for ticket sales with The Curse of La Llorona, a ridiculously silly and scare-free cinematic cliche which attempts to build on the Mexican folklore of the same name. Produced by franchise stalwart, James Wan, and directed by American filmmaker, Michael Chaves, in his big screen debut after a succession of short films, La Llorona sees the usually reliable Linda Cardellini (Green Book) as Mexican-born social care worker, Anna, who after investigating the disappearance of a past client's two young children, falls under the murderous spell of the titular "weeping woman", a CGI heavy, poorly designed spectre who soon takes a liking to her two young children still reeling from the death of their father. Whilst audiences and critics alike are now totally clued up in regards to what to expect from a franchise as unreliable and uninspiring as the one in which La Llorona sits, one has to take some form of nostalgia by remembering just how darn good both The Conjuring and The Conjuring Two actually were, but with the likes of Annabelle and The Nun clearly showing how such a series may have stretched a point slightly too far, Chaves' debut unsurprisingly nestles nicely with the latter as it fails to ignite any sense of intrigue whatsoever.
Beginning in familiar horror movie fashion by attempting to rationalise the decision behind the main antagonist's desire for death, La Llorona soons falls into the trap of offering up cliche after cliche as the primary threat is harnessed through endless jump scares, a tactic of which doesn't exactly pay off as such well versed genre tropes come across as neither surprising or in any way scary, resulting in heavy sighs every time the sound system in the cinema gets a good old test run as we are mistreated to cranked up violins or the endless wailing of our titular ghostie. With the film falling into the Sinister trap by showing way too much way too soon in regards to the evil at the heart of the drama come the hour mark, the film also soon loses all sense of originality completely, resorting to repetitive, dull and thoroughly uninteresting set pieces which all seem to be designed in order to justify the ninety minute runtime, but with no sense of threat or dread at all as it plays towards a very middling and family friendly conclusion, the scariest part of The Curse of La Llorona is that such a film was actually made in the first place.
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