It's 1973 and widowed social worker Anna (Linda Cardellini) is raising two kids of her own, Chris (Roman Christou) and Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen) when she attracts the attention of child-murdering demon-ghost, La Llorona (the Wailing/Weeping Woman).
Having 'rescued' two children from what she believes is an abusive mother, Anna is horrified when the children turn up dead the next day, drowned in the city's river,
The grieving mother, Patricia Alvarez (Patricia Velasquez) babbles something about La Llorona, and when strange marks - akin to those found on the recently drowned children - appear on the arms of her own children, Anna starts to investigate.
Her local priest, Father Perez (Tony Amendola) advises her to look outside the church for a speedy resolution to her concerns, sending her to renegade faith healer, Rafael Olvera (Raymond Cruz).
Ultimately, The Curse of La Llorona is a very pedestrian action-horror, hamstrung by a disappointingly generic "demonic ghost" with powers that range from near-omnipotence to total impotence, largely depending on the demands of the script. Sometimes she can fly, sometimes she can't, sometimes she can magically appear in a room, sometimes she can't etc
Unfortunately, the film quickly writes itself into a corner by focusing La Llorona on Anna's family so early on, as then there's no one outside of a small circle of characters who can be drawn in and you know the ghost isn't going to kill Anna or her kids - certainly not before the finale anyway.
Then we're just left with a lot of threatening gestures, but no real threat. Admittedly, some of La Llorona's appearances are rather well thought-out (such as when she becomes visible through Sam's umbrella), but there's never any sense of verisimilitude to her ghostly appearances.
It's difficult to say too much else about The Curse of La Llorona because it's so formulaic and mediocre. We've all seen worse and we've all seen better.
Coming in at just over 90 minutes, with a bit of trimming this could easily have been reworked into a solid episode of Supernatural - as Olvera, and his clever bag of 'anti-evil spirits' tricks (love the bit with the eggs), fills the role we're used to seeing Sam and Dean Winchester take in similar yarns.
Except, Supernatural is way better at defining what its paranormal antagonists can and can't do.
Through Father Perez, who also appeared in Annabelle, The Curse of La Llorona has its marketing connection to The Conjuring Universe, but, as yet, there's nothing deeper. Certainly nothing to tie this film to The Warrens.
Great play is made in the film's introductory scenes about Anna's encounter taking place exactly 300 years after the creation of the ghost, but then this is never addressed again.
Given that La Llorona is a genuine Latin American folktale, it's a shame that it was treated so generically.
Maybe, like the demon doll Annabelle herself, the cinematic La Llorona will be redeemed in a future film. Or perhaps we'll never return this haunted spin-off cul-de-sac.
