The Boogeywoman

Aussie-Malay director James Wan is best known for his highly successful horror franchises such as ‘Saw,’ ‘Insidious’ and ‘The Conjuring.’  Having recently helmed mainstream blockbuster tent-poles such as ‘Fast & Furious 7’ and ‘Aquaman,’ the low-budget horror genre he started out in is now a bit anti-climactic, so he’s only attached as a producer in the latest entry, ‘The Curse of La Llorona,’ loosely set in ‘The Conjuring’ universe which also includes three ‘Annabelle’ films and ‘The Nun.’

 

'The Curse of La Llorona,’ the directorial debut of Michael Chaves (who dat?), is based on the traditional Mexican folk tale/urban legend of the “Weeping Woman,” the evil spirit of a vengeful 17th Century wife and mother who drowned her own children in a fit of rage after stumbling upon her husband doing the nasty with another woman.  La Llorona is a tale told to scare children into being good, much like how the Boogeyman will get unruly children who don't behave themselves.  Set in an atmospheric ‘70s-era Los Angeles, the curse of La Llorona plagues and terrorizes a widowed single mother (Linda Cardellini) and her two children, who in desperation enlists the help of an unconventional exiled Catholic priest (Raymond Cruz) to make La Llorona go away and leave her kids alone.

 

Being the jaded horror movie-watcher that I am, the R-rated  TCOL2 (don’t know why, it could easily have been PG-13 in my book) wasn’t particularly scary or even suspenseful.  It’s a rather unspectacular, by-the-numbers horror entry with the typical dreary atmosphere (rains on most days), easily anticipated jump scares and various other tropes you’ve seen before.  It’s not a terrible movie objectively speaking and might have been scarier if I haven’t seen its kind so many times before, but it offered nothing groundbreaking or particularly new.

Grade: C+