My Review of The Curse Of La Llorona (2019)

 

Written by Mikki Daughtry And Tobias Iaconis

Directed by Michael Chaves 

Patricia: "It's your fault! I tried to stop her!"

Anna: "Who did you try to stop?"

Patricia: "La Llorona!"

To complete my review of The Conjuring universe, I review the one movie that may or may not be a part of said universe. I do get it as this one definitely did feel like the most standalone entry of the bunch.

The movie opened in 17th century Mexico, resulting in a young boy drowning after witnessing his mother kill his own brother. Then we cut to 1973 Los Angeles where single mother and caseworker, Anna Tate-Garcia (Linda Cardellini) would be the main focus of the movie.

Anna's job as a caseworker brought her into contact with the struggling Patricia Alvarez (Patricia Velázquez). Patricia's kids ended up being taken into care, despite them telling Anna to keep them in a room for their protection. Of course this was a warning that went ignored and consequences ensued as a result.

I'm vaguely familiar with the La Llorona or Weeping Woman myth and this movie had Anna and her own children, Chris (Roman Christou) and Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen) soon became targeted by La Llorona (Marisol Ramirez) with Anna's parenting coming into question by her own employers.

Throwing in some connective tissue with the main universe, I did like the use of Father Perez (Tony Amendola) from the first Annabelle movie. He's paired well with Anna along with former priest Rafael (Raymond Cruz) to help Anna save her children from La Llorona herself.

It's a tense enough movie with the grief stricken Patricia adding a complication while Anna's own daughter was able to get through to La Llorona with a necklace. Throw in a fire tree cross and the titular villain was defeated, with a hint of another encounter at a later date.

- The film was also known as The Curse Of The Weeping Woman in some markets.

- For me, there's enough references for this to be a part of The Conjuring universe, despite Michael Chaves stance on the matter.

- Standout music: Liliana de Faria's Arrorró Mi Niño.

- Chronology: 1673 Mexico and 1973 Los Angeles.

The Curse Of La Llorona made for a solid, mostly standalone movie but the amount of references made, it's clearly meant to be in that universe. I liked this one for the most part.

Rating: 6 out of 10