The 273rd review overall!
I’m under the gun to get this one out before the clock hits midnight! It was a pretty good day today, I even cooked bacon for the first time, which was an adventure. After dinner, and a few stop and starts, we watched...
The Curse of La Llorona (2019). Family Video.
I’m pretty sure it goes without saying, but anything in the Conjuring Universe is a must see for me. In one of my earlier reviews this year I alluded to why I love these movies on a personal level and for the most part they’ve run the gamut of very scary to terrifying. I didn’t love them all, but at their worst they’ve still provided some really good scares.
The movie opens hundreds of years ago. A mother and her two children are frolicking in a field, and everyone is super happy. The boy even gives his mother a beautiful necklace that she loves! The boy closes his eyes, and when he opens them, they’re gone. After a search he finds the mother drowning his sister. After the deed is done he takes off only to get yanked away as the movie wipes to the 1970’s. The woman, La Llorona, was cursed for his unbelievably evil act, forced to roam the world searching for kids to replace her lost ones.
That’s pretty much all you need to know about the plot, because you know she’s going to doing some haunting when looking at the title of the movie. The victims, a case worker, Anna, whose husband just passed away along with her two children Samantha and Chris. It’s a great premise and wonderful story. When dealing with this particular series or horror in general the big bad a lot of times is some type of demon, you don’t often get a good ghost story, thankfully this is a good ghost story.
La Llorona doesn’t do any of the gimmicky stuff that’s scary, like the groans or super jerky way of walking, she’s just a woman in a flowing white dress and shroud and she’s all kinds of pissed off. You get plenty of good looks at her and the makeup is well done, she just looks scary. One thing holding it back, this movie relies too heavily on jump scares. Outside of a scene taking place in a bathtub and one part at the end there’s really no creepy factor, except for her scream later in the movie, that was an AWESOME moment. But for the most part, she shows up, doors fly open and people go flying. Things go from A to Z really fast in this movie.
That’s just a personal nit pick of mine. When I get late in October, like I am now, I’ve already watched 25 horror movies. When some of them run out of things to say, they just bang on a piano and have something pop out at you. It’s lazy and after watching so many in a row, it becomes old hat. Still, I have to give it some credit, some of the jump scares are pretty good.
The characters are enjoyable, although I think someone who put this together hated Samantha. Everyone is actually smart in this movie and their actions are a logical response to the impossible situation at hand, and it’s pretty refreshing, until you get to Sam. She has two moments that make you slap your forehead, although the second isn’t really her fault. But the first time, you want to yell at your screen in the hopes that maybe she can hear you because she not only takes the idiot ball, she runs it in for a 60-yard touchdown. But without that bit we don’t get to see a pretty cool scene. Keep in mind, I’m not talking about the young actress, she did a fine job, it just seemed like they didn’t help her out in the writing department.
I really enjoyed the ghost. I already touched on her appearance, which was great, but her backstory is horrifying and tragic at the same time. The movie wasn’t the greatest, but it did a great job with its villain. They had one really intriguing scene that I wish played out a little longer, but alas Sam ruined it. I also liked how it’s its own story. It didn’t need another to be introduced and seems to have an actual ending. I appreciate that, it’s not often in horror where a movie has a definite ending, this one seems like it did. But it made a lot more money than it expected to, so don’t be surprised for our ghost friend to do some haunting for a little extra $$$.