Movie Review: The Curse of La Llorona (2019)

The Curse of La Llorona exists in The Conjuring universe. It’s based on Mexican folklore of La Llorona or the weeping woman. Her husband abandoned her for a younger women, out of grief she murdered their two young children and killed herself in the river. She is condemned to search for her children and kidnaps children to drown, replaying the murder of her own children. I’ve read various books featuring the legend so was curious how the movie fared.

It’s based in the 70’s and a social worker is struggling with her own family after her police officer husbands death. She takes on a case where two children haven’t been attending school and have a background with social services. When she gets there she finds the mother is hiding them and seems unhinged so she takes them for their safety, however the mother was hiding them from La Llorona and this means they can now be abducted by the spirit. La Llorona soon turns her gaze on the social workers children and she has to turn to the church and a disillusioned priest.

I enjoyed this movie. I thought it was atmospheric and as a parent I felt the desperation of the risk of something happening to your children. I thought Linda Cardellini was good and we shouted “Scooby Doo” when we realised where we’d seen her before (we also noted Scooby Doo was playing on the TV in one scene…on purpose?). I’m not a huge fan of The Conjuring franchise (especially Annabelle etc) but I thought this was average to good. It wasn’t super scary but we enjoyed it. My hubby says he thought it was a good use of mythology from a different background other than the usual European/Church based background. I also liked it better than The Nun.

7/10 from me and 7.5/10 from hubby (he said the only scare he felt was for the children). The boy refuses to watch it because he says it looks baaaad.