By Melissa Antoinette Garza
Well, that fucking sucked! Why did that suck so bad? I didn’t expect much. I thought it’d be mediocre. I was hoping it’d be okay, but damn was that awful!
Poor Linda Cardellini! When you use your range as an actress more in the SCOOBY-DOO franchise than in a mainstream horror project, get a new agent! Cardellini is a fab talent. She’s got a great look, can deliver a line with a punch and has a genuine toughness about her that I like. She could be a badass, but this was the wrong role.
The film takes place in the 1970s but makes no effort to make it look or feel like that time. The more I see movies attempt to capture a certain decade and fail the more I appreciate what Tarantino did in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD (2019). That’s a great fucking movie. This – THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA (2019) is shit.
Now for the most part, I love THE CONJURING universe and those made by the producers tend to hit at least a few of the right chords with me. I even really liked the new ANNABELLE COMES HOME (2019) flick. That said, I hated THE NUN (2018) and this was on that same level. It was just an empty stupid movie where the same “scares” happen over and over again and there’s never a real payoff.
The film follows social worker Anna (Linda Cardellini) who goes to check on some kids that are locked in a closet and are suspected of abuse. Patricia (Patricia Velasquez), the mother suspected of beating her children, says that the culprit is La Llorona (Marisol Ramirez). She’s some bitch ghost in a wedding dress that drowned her own kids and is now after Patricia’s. She gets them too and Patty-girl is thrown in the slammer.
Soon, Anna’s tykes are the targets. The same weird bruises that appeared on Patricia’s little ones are now on the arms of Anna’s young son and daughter. Desperate, Anna brings in the help of two priests; Father Perez (Tony Amendola) and Rafael (Raymond Cruz). Rafael is a weird voodoo style priest who does these stupid cheesy things to show the paranormal entity is in Anna’s house. He runs eggs up and down the walls and then cracks them revealing black gunk in each one. It’s dumb. I guess it is actually part of the La Llorona folklore, but when making a movie you can cut some shit out. Take out the lame stuff and put in some cooler shit. Bring in a spirit board, tarot cards and a séance. Imma love that! Eggs that spaz out and shoot tar everywhere, I can do without.
Anna becomes the subject of an investigation as her coworkers believe she flipped and is a child abuser herself. Meanwhile, Anna does what she can to keep her children alive.
Every once in awhile, La Llorona makes an appearance. She jumps out behind curtains. She yells a lot. She tries to drown the little ones. Any of this would be good if it was scary at all, but it sucked.
There was zero atmospheric tension and the tone was all over the place. It’s as though the filmmakers wanted a slow burn like THE OMEN (1976) but had no story to go with it so they boggled the movie down with popcorn movie scares that didn’t fit the flow. In between, there were these long dragged out boring scenes that added nothing to the plot. It’s just bad. It’s bad. It’s bad. It’s bad! It’s like a watered down version of THE GRUDGE (2004) and the THE GRUDGE was already watered the fuck down.
THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA could have been an easy win for horror. All it needed to be was a haunted house flick where the children were being terrorized, but you needed some real scares in it. There was nothing. This was just b-o-r-i-n-g.
The only highlight about this whole movie is that my brother spent the $25.00 on it instead of me. I only lost time watching this shit show.
Unless by some weird circumstance, you are forced to choose between watching this and DON’T BREATHE (2016), skip it at all costs. It’s only saving grace was that it wasn’t DON’T BREATHE.
Scared Stiff Rating: 1/10 (It gets one point for Cardellini. I like her)
