The Conjuring universe has brought yet another jump-scare fest in the form of ‘The Curse of La Llorona’ or the weeping woman.
The movie is the sixth installment in the conjuring universe and is based on a Mexican folklore that’s nothing short of a Greek tragedy of a woman who drowns her children in a fit of jealous rage over her husband’s affair.
The lady then spends the rest of her life and after-life wailing for her children and hunting others in a bid to replace them.
To some, she was just another invention to frighten young children into obedience, but in the conjuring universe she’s pretty much just a glorified hitman.
However, once the movie came out, the hilarity of the name soon plummeted straight down the list of other things that were far more laughable.
From its mediocre and cliché narrative to its overuse of jump-scares, there was nothing particularly outstanding about the film.
The protagonist is a single mother of two somehow gets entangled in the mysterious deaths of two boys and has to now fend for her children against the ghostly woman who has been put up to it by the bereaved mother of the former two boys, who blames our main lady for the loss of her children.
I mean, can you really invoke a malevolent spirit to do your bidding like that? If that was the case, why didn’t just invoke it to not bother your kids so you won’t have to keep them holed up in a tiny closet that would get the authorities attention in the first place?
SO MANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS.
When promotions had first started for the film, the pronunciation of the film’s name was a running joke amongst everyone anxiously awaiting the release.
The movie also features Father Perez of Annabelle fame, who despite being a main character does very little for the plot.
The actors were the one saving grace of the film, who did a phenomenal job, playing their respective characters to a tee, but other than that the film follows the same formulaic narrative as every other movie in the Conjuring franchise and by the time you end the first quarter you can pretty much figure out how the rest of the story is going to go.
However, my issue with La Llorona is not with the lore behind it or even with the production as much as it is with what little it does for its genre and how it barely scratches the surface, at this point I am not even sure if there is any deeper meaning to it.
We all know that horror movies are a metaphoric representation of cultural fears of every decade, thereby these films are a true testament to how the audience and society really has evolved over the years.
The rising popularity of maternal horror is a result of films riding the contemporary feminist wave, which heralds a revolution and revision of traditional gender roles and the dysfunctional mother is a by-product of that.
Alternatively, on a macro level, maternal horror could also be a representation of climate change, where Mother Nature, an otherwise nurturing life-giver actively destroys its creation. This antagonistic side of Mother Nature is also a prominent recurring theme in pagan mythology.
It’s not that Hollywood’s oedipal complex has been fruitless, as a matter of fact the obsession and fascination with the ‘bad mom’ has given audiences many phenomenal contemporary horror films and when compared to them, Curse of La Llorona fails miserably short.
Maybe it was meant to be just a mindless horror flick and there is nothing more to it but switching your brain off and going with the flow.
But the reason why some horror films are so iconic and have managed to stick with the audience so well is because of the profound critique and insight it offers us of the society we live in.
In an age where we get films like Get out, Hereditary and US; La Llorona only seems juvenile and underestimates the intelligence of its audience.
It also shows why jump-scares are losing their luster.
The film is indeed good example in showing how even a complex genre like maternal horror is being readily cheapened in Hollywood, making bad mom horror just for the sake of it.
We, at Absolute Geeks would give this jump-scare riddled movie a 4/10, just for the actors and the concept that offered so much more than what was delivered.
