It seems like we’re beginning to enter that period in the Conjuring franchise similar to some of the second phase MCU films where even if a movie isn’t necessarily bad, there is a bland sameness to it that takes away from what made the initial installments so immediately impactful. This new entry to the Conjuring universe (which still needs a proper name) is The Curse of La Llorona. This might surprise some of you because this was never advertised as a part of that franchise, and I’m honestly not sure why.
Regardless, this time the story revolves around the popular Latin folklore of La Llorona, a weeping ghoul in a dress cursed to roam the world after she drowned her two children in a fit of rage after discovering her lover has cheated on her. Her spirit searches for her children, and the legend goes she will find and take other – living – children as her own, and by taking, I mean drowning.
We get a brief glimpse of this backstory during the film before it eventually cuts to Los Angeles in the 1970s, where we meet our lead, Anna Tate-Garcia (Linda Cardellini), a social worker and widow who is raising two kids, Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen) and Chris (Roman Christou). One day, she does an emergency house visit that doesn’t end well, one thing leads to another, and she soon discovers that her family has become a target for La Llorona, after noticing similarities between incidents and scars that occurred with her kids and that of the family she visited earlier.
So, that sameness I talked about is basically a reflection of the way the various filmmakers that have helmed films in this series are all aping the style of James Wan, who of course serves as a producer here. The fast, flowing camera work, long takes, the slow, quiet build up to intense scares, and the relatively high production values that place good attention to period details. None of the filmmakers, even good ones like David F. Sandberg, have really veered away from this general aesthetic. The only exception being Corin Hardy’s more extra old school gothic vibe that he brought to The Nun, but a lot of the techniques for the scares remained the same even then.
Sure, one could easily say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The only real dud in this series so far is the very first Annabelle, and even that has a couple solid moments. However, when you have so many directors following a certain style, it takes away from the idiosyncrasies that they could otherwise offer, since they can’t replicate Wan’s ticks and fascinations and weirdness because he’s not the one behind the camera.
When it comes to The Curse of La Llorona, director, Michael Chaves, and writers, Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis, end up creating the most generic out of all the Conjuring movies so far. It goes through the motions for a movie like this in a franchise like this without adding some much needed personality. It’s a shame because with a story like this, it lends itself to creating a distinctive atmosphere that builds on the cultural specificity of the character. Except the film can’t do that because practically the entire creative team is made up of white guys, and even the lead is a white woman. Sure, we have some Latinx supporting characters, with Raymond Cruz’s Rafael being a highlight, but the film unintentionally others the cultural elements. It all feels like an outsider looking into this community and their folklore, as opposed to being about a Latin American character who would potentially have a more intimate connection to the tale of La Llorona. No offense to Cardellini, who is quite good in this, but her character was not the right kind of character to lead a story like this.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say The Curse of La Llorona is terrible. I was never bored, I was kept reasonably engaged throughout, Marisol Ramirez Is a genuinely intimidating presence as La Llorona, and there’s some playful scares and camera work. I’m a sucker for ghost stories to begin with, which is why I tend to go a bit easy on some of these movies, but I can definitely recognize this as a severe mixed bag (and I quite enjoyed The Nun, for the most part) that is – at worst – pretty forgettable, but it also makes the big mistake of putting white creatives in charge of a story that should’ve been a huge opportunity for Latinx filmmakers to tell a story about a character that has freaked them out since they were kids. The Conjuring franchise will power through, and that new Annabelle looks fun, but it’s time to bring a fresh perspective to these movies.