The Curse of La Llorona

A run-of-the-mill horror flick that, like Anabelle 2, attacks the audience with child endangerment. As is common in clichéd horror flicks without any individuality, it tries to mask the lack of originality of its story and faulty logic with loud sound design and solid production values (read: it sounds intense and looks good). That is nothing that will make you remember the movie a few years later. Zero connection to the Conjuring universe. (04/17/2019)

Nothing new under the Sun. A well-done routine. If you are looking forward to this, you won’t be disappointed. The only thing that might make you do a double-take is the Hispanic way of doing exorcism, which is sometimes very different from what we usually see. (07/30/2019)

The anticipated La Llorona is ultimately a big disappointment and The Conjuring 3 is in great danger. Debutant Michael Chaves directs a dull and overly sterile horror film that could have at least leaned on interesting Mexican folklore, but even on that level it fails to impress. The big problem I see is that la Llorona only really focuses on the two central kids, but if it had focused on the other kids in town, more interesting things could have happened. As it is, the plot isn't very entertaining and the actual scares, rather than startling, will wake you from your microsleep. It lacks atmosphere, stronger drive, better pacing and more interesting characters, instead we get a many times seen and tedious mainstream horror hell. A class below The Nun and actually the weakest installment of the Conjuring Universe. The film will please at most teenage girls who go to the cinema to hang out. The best part of the whole movie was the fact that I got it for free. 40% (05/06/2019)

Making horror movies of this type is probably already in every handbook on how to get instantly rich without making exorbitant demands on yourself. Investing a few shiny millions in a simple scare is now almost a 100% guarantee of many times the earnings, so for obvious reasons it doesn't motivate much of anyone to push the creative limits just a little bit further again. Some weasel here has still got a great business plan to milk it out of the Latino audience, (veeeery) loosely tie it to, for some reason, the successful Annabelle franchise, and fill theaters to the ceiling with people who must really not care anymore. It's really exhausting at times to watch the adaptation of a script whose speed of writing must have been limited only by the speed of typing on the keyboard. The main victims of this are of course the characters, who are either useless, stupid, constantly changing their motivations, or simply funny. Behind them trails a central windbag whose abilities are completely random and basically just for effect. One moment she appears in a window, then she's only visible through an umbrella, then suddenly from the curtains, then out of a tablecloth... halfway through the film, I'm prepared for her to pop out of someone's ear at any moment. And honestly, that was the only thing that could help the film to be average. But it didn't. Oops, spoiler. (07/18/2019)

Already when I started watching the film, it was clear to me that I couldn’t expect anything groundbreaking. The greater was my surprise at how enjoyable it was. The authors managed to create a decent atmosphere, they didn't just rely on stupid jump scares (even though they were impossible to avoid) and they added a good dose of suspense. Plus, there were two boogeymen to fight against: an undead Mexican and the American social services, and that's quite a challenge. (08/06/2019)

The American horror movie The Curse of La Llorona is worth seeing at the cinema because you could enjoy some pretty good scenes and a few scares on the big screen. If you do not expect more than a few scares and do not care if the story is original, this movie will do. (10/25/2019)