Curse of La Boring

Hidey-Ho, Horror nuts and Welcome to another WTFHM!

So, you know how you find yourself in anticipation of a movie based on an amazing trailer? You know that excited feeling you get when you first see that movie you’ve been waiting for all this time?




Now imagine that you see that movie...and the trailer turns out to be the best thing about it.




Heartbreaking, isn’t it?




That brings us to this week’s movie.




The Curse of la Llorona starring Linda Cardellini, Roman Christou, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen, Raymond Cruz, Marisol Ramirez, Patricia Velasquez, Sean Patrick Thomas, Tony Amendola, Irene Keng, Oliver Alexander, and Aiden Lewandowski.




Oookay, so let’s just start this off by noting that this story takes place in The Conjuring universe...but has nothing to do with those movies, really. We get a small character crossover (Amendola reprises his role as Father Perez from Anabelle) and a few easter eggs, but really, you don’t have to sit through the Conjuring to watch this movie.




Picture it, 1673. A family is playing in a field, the little boy gives the mom a necklace, everyone but the little boy disappears, the little boy finds his mother drowning his little brother, then she grabs him and drowns him too.

That all appears to be a dream sequence, by the way, but if everyone’s dead, then I don’t know who’s doing the dreaming.




Anyway, fast forward three hundred years to 1973. Anna Tate-Garcia(Cardellini) is a case worker trying to live her life after the death of her husband. She’s having trouble keeping up with her cases because she has to look after her two kids.




She’s about to get one of her cases taken away, but she manages to convince her boss not to give it to her younger, prettier, and childless coworker instead and goes to see about the mother in question.




She rolls up on the mother, Patricia (Velasquez) and quickly finds that something is really wrong.




Like real frickin’ wrong.




Like, her kids are locked in the closet wrong.

Anna tries to get them out and is attacked by the mother. Fortunately, Anna showed up to Patricia’s apartment with a cop and he manages to pull her off Anna and take her away kicking and screaming. Anna lets the kids out of the locked closet and puts them in foster care, even though they don’t want to go.




When Anna tries to question them about why they were in there in the first place, they just say something to the affect of “because she will get us.” Anna naturally assumes they mean their mother and puts them in child protective custody.




Okay, that leads me to a very important rule in horror. Listen to the kids. Anytime a little kid tells an adult that a monster/ghoul/ghosty-goo is coming to get them, you can take that as gospel.  So, suffice it to say, Little Carlos and Tomas (Alexander and Lewandowski) are lured out of their beds by La Llorona the next night and Anna gets a call that the boys have been found dead in the river.




Since Anna doesn’t have a babysitter or anything, she wakes her kids up, puts them in the car and drives over to the crime scene. She tells her son not to wake his sister and to stay his behind in the car.




That whole thing is weird to me, by the way. I consider myself to be a pretty good mom...but if it was, like, three in the morning and the kids were asleep already and I have the option of waking my kids up and taking my kids to an actually crime scene where there will more than likely be two dead children or just leaving them home for a few hours, I’m pretty sure I’d take the risk and leave them at home.



But, whatever, she takes the kids anyway. And while she’s dealing with two dead kids and a hysterical mother who blames her for getting her kids killed, Chris decides to get out of the car to get a closer look at the dead bodies because...well, he’s a kid.




Sure enough, while he’s creeping around in the shadows, he comes across a woman in a dirty white dress, crying and…




You ever play Left for Dead? Well, then you know what happens if you come across a woman crying in the dark.




Chris manages to get away, but not before the woman leaves a burn mark on his arm. He makes it to the car where he’s followed by the la Llorona ghost, where she might’ve gotten them if not for Anna coming back to the car.




Okay, so, after that big scare, La Llorona has now decided that she’s going to scare the crap out of Chris and his little sister Sam (Kinchen) and leave weird burn marks on them. And before you ask, yes, Anna gets investigated herself for the marks on her kids, but don’t worry about that, it doesn’t come up again.




So, Anna interviews Patricia, who tells her that it was La Llorona who was trying to get her kids and now because Anna let her boys die, she prayed for La Llorona to get her kids next.




Anna doesn’t pay that or any of the weird stuff too much attention until one night la Llorona attacks Sam in the bathtub. Anna manages to save her and gets her very own burn mark on her arm for her trouble.




At this point, Anna realizes that some serious ghostly stuff is happening. She seeks out Father Perez’ help and in an obligatory plug for Anabelle, he tells her that the case reminds him of a little case with a porcelain doll. Then he tells her he can’t help her. But he knows a guy that used to be a priest that can help.




Enter Rafael Olvera (Cruz) who, the minute he finds out who she’s dealing with says he can’t help her. She convinces him otherwise and he comes to help anyways.




Olvera sets up candles and blessings around the house to protect Anna and the children, but they don’t really do anything...but it all looks pretty cool, but it's pretty pointless.



I mean, really. The La Llorona ghost blows out protective candles and chases them all over the house before they manage to lead her out of the house and keep her out with crushed up tree-beans (from a fire tree in ancient folklore, blah, blah, blah) on the threshold of the front door...and that doesn’t work because Sam leaves her doll outside and decides she wants to get it back, which she does. But not before wiping away some of the tree-beans.




Anyway, La Llorona gets back in the house and goes after the kids. The kids get away, but then Patricia shows up with a gun and shoots Olvera and looks at Anna all like; “I’M GONNA KILL YOU FOR KILLING MY KIDS”.

Anna’s like; “No you’re not.”

And then Patricia’s like; “Okay, maybe I’m not.”



So, Anna and Patricia rush to help their kids, who are in the attic. Anna saves them by stabbing La Llorona in the chest with a knife made from the Fire Tree.




And they all live happily ever after...except I didn’t because I had to sit through this movie.




There’s a lot of noise in this movie. Like a lot of scenes that are just filler and not much else. They don’t lend much to the plot or give us any real background. They’re just...there. And what does happen seems like it’s only happening because the screenwriters ran out of anything interesting to say and just started pulling things from the air to keep things moving. This movie is like a pit into nothingness that just goes on and on and on...





And, you know, La Llorona is a real legend, right? I hate it when they do actual ghost stories dirty like that.




Yeah, no me gusta.

Next week, Escape Room which I hear is craptastic! Good thing I love Craptastic movies.

See you next week!

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