It’s not exactly Michael Chaves’ directorial debut, as some have said, but his feature debut: he directed the award-winning short The Maiden, which has a similar atmospheric quality. The direction and production are wonderful. The acting is uniformly great really, everyone does a good job and is well cast. It wasn’t slow to the point of dullness, but almost and the nature of the story made the few “scary scenes” kind of scheduled: the family attracts a bad spirit, the kids sense a ghost coming closer, it nearly gets them, they escape its clutches the mother senses a ghost coming closer, it nearly gets her, they all escape its clutches, but get more scared they get help, and it nearly gets them… But the tension is mild, and it was a mood my mind jumped at as a relief from the otherwise slow nature of the film. There are tense moments, while we wait to see whether the ghost will strike (if that’s what ghosts do?) or whether the kids will slip out of the protection laid down by the friendly neighborhood healer (Raymond Cruz, Breaking Bad). The Curse of La Llorona is not a scary film. Their single mother Patricia (Patricia Velasquez, The Mummy, Arrested Development) is naturally blamed, though she blames La Llorona… and soon Anna’s own children find themselves at risk from this ghost, a curse passed on by Patricia. Anna (Linda Cardellini, Dead to Me, Scooby Doo), a social worker, goes to visit a family with a concern that the two boys are being kept in a cupboard, only to discover the next day they have drowned. The Curse of La Llorona is set in 1973 (a few years after the events of Annabelle), not in Mexico, but in Los Angeles. And apparently, ever since then, her ghost returns, looking for other children to replace her own. In her grief and despair, she drowned their two children in the river to spite him but coming to her senses afterward, she regrets this act and does away with herself too. Legend has it that in 1673, La Llorona (Marisol Ramirez, Circle) was abandoned by her husband for a younger, more attractive woman. The spin-off films drifted farther and farther away from reality and had variable success: Annabelle was popular enough to have a third film on the way (which looks pretty good in the trailers), and The Nun was downright poor. Treating some real-life paranormal investigations as serious period drama worked beautifully and the real-life settings drew the audience in.
I’m one of those horror fans who have great admiration for James Wan’s The Conjuring and its sequel.
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