The Curse of La Llorona (2019)

America takes Mexican folklore, dunks it in chlorine, and calls it horror.


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🎥 Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers, shall we?

📚 Folklore vs. Film

The Legend: La Llorona is one of Mexico’s most famous ghost stories — the “weeping woman” who drowned her children after heartbreak and now roams rivers at night, cursed to search for them forever. She lures other children near the water, mistaking them for her own, dragging them to a watery grave. It’s tragic, cultural, and deeply tied to the land and rivers of Mexico.

The Movie: Forget rivers, forget Mexico. La Llorona now haunts American suburbs, swimming pools, and living rooms like she’s on a U.S. tour. Instead of a grief-stricken spirit, she’s reduced to a generic screeching demon with CGI jump scares. Her weakness? A tree branch stabbed into her chest. Centuries of chilling folklore boiled down to “ghost dies by wood.”



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📖 Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

So the real legend of La Llorona: centuries-old Mexican folklore about a grieving woman who drowned her children after being abandoned by her husband. She regretted it, drowned herself, and became cursed to wander rivers forever, weeping, searching for her lost kids, dragging other children into the water by mistake. It’s tragic, eerie, culturally rich.

Now the movie version: “What if La Llorona just… moved to America and haunted white suburban kids in their swimming pools?”
Yep. Forget rivers, forget Mexico, forget cultural roots. This ghost apparently brings her passport, clears TSA, and now she’s just a screeching demon who can show up anywhere. Houses, cars, asylums — you name it. They turned a chilling folk ghost into a Walmart-brand demon with the same powers as every other horror monster.


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👥 Character Rundown

Anna (Linda Cardellini) – Mom who just wants to protect her kids but spends most of the runtime yelling “Stay in the house!” while they immediately… don’t.

Chris & Samantha – The kids. These two have horror-movie IQ levels of about 12. They open doors when clearly told not to, wander into dark hallways, and practically invite La Llorona in. Darwin Award winners in training.

Father Perez – Yep, the priest from Annabelle. He pops in for five minutes to say “Yup, demons are real” and then vanishes. And that flimsy cameo is literally the only reason this got stamped into the Conjuring universe.



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⏳ Pacing / Flow

Fast, cheap, and generic. It’s just jump scare → cry → screech → rinse and repeat. The story never escalates, just cycles the same beats until the cross-stabbing finale.


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✅ Pros

The crying sound design is unsettling (for about the first ten minutes).

Linda Cardellini does her best with the nonsense she’s given.



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❌ Cons

They butchered the legend. This isn’t La Llorona, it’s “Generic Screaming Demon #47.”

A tree branch is her weakness. A tree branch. So centuries of folklore end with: “stabby stab with some wood, ghost gone.”

The whole “she can cross borders” thing is laughable. La Llorona isn’t bound to rivers anymore, she’s now on a U.S. road trip like she packed her passport and booked a Motel 6.

Why is this even part of the Conjuring universe? Father Perez cameo ≠ legitimate connection. It’s a marketing gimmick, nothing more.

The kids are unbearable. They’re told “stay inside,” but immediately run outside. They touch cursed objects. They scream, trip, and slow everything down. Honestly? If La Llorona had drowned them in act one, the movie would’ve been 40 minutes shorter and infinitely better.

Not scary. The real legend is chilling because it’s tragic and cultural. Here? It’s just another screechy CGI ghoul jumping at the camera.



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💭 Final Thoughts

This movie takes a centuries-old legend that’s haunted generations and turns it into “spooky babysitter demon.” It’s Americanized, sanitized, and dumbed down into something so tame and generic it could’ve been any off-brand Netflix horror flick. Instead of honoring folklore, it just cheapens it.

And as for being in the Conjuring universe? Please. Slapping Father Perez in here for one scene is the cinematic equivalent of duct-taping a “shared universe” sticker on the box. Lazy, cheap, pointless.


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⭐ Rating

3/10 – Folklore turned into fast food horror. A waste of a legend.


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⚠️ Spoiler Warning

Spoilers ahead — grab your tree branch, it’s the only weapon you’ll need.


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💀 Spoilers

So the kids are the first targets, of course, because they’re dumb enough to open doors when creepy crying echoes through the house. They get marked with ghostly burns, proving La Llorona basically branded them like cattle. Mom finally sees her and realizes her kids weren’t just “acting out.” Groundbreaking detective work.

The finale is where it all collapses. It builds to a showdown where La Llorona corners the kids, only for mom to stab her with a cross made from the tree branch tied to her death. She screeches, melts, and vanishes. That’s it. Centuries of legend wrapped up with a glorified toothpick.

And then, because the Conjuring universe demands it, Father Perez pops back in to nod sagely and remind us this is all connected. But the connection is so weak it may as well not exist. In the end, the family is safe, the ghost is gone, and we’re left with a movie that strips one of Mexico’s most haunting stories down to a Scooby-Doo episode with extra screeching.