She may want your children, but she's not quite willing to hold your attention.
The year is 1973 and caseworker Anna is investigating the disappearance of a client's two children. Arriving at Patricia's house, Anna discovers the children locked in a closet while Patricia fanatically cries for them not to be removed. Of course, the hysterical mother is in fact the only person who knows the truth: her children are being hunted by a supernatural entity known as La Llorona.
A character from Mexican folklore, La Llorona is the "Weeping Woman" who has lost her own children and seeks others to prey upon. She is an iconic stock character, not unlike Grimm characters, and her presence in this story is less woeful than terrifying. She lives in the dark, dripping the water from her tears along with the water of the river in which she drowned her own children. She's not a force of nature so much as a vengeful ghost of a real woman from three hundred years before -- we see her story in the film's intro and a few subsequent flashbacks -- and of course she is eventually undone by an obscure pseudo-religious reference that appears out of nowhere.
The latest installment in the Conjuring franchise -- yes, it was a surprise to me, too -- is almost too standalone to work. It has nothing to do with anything we've seen in the series yet, except for a sneeze-and-you'll-miss-it reference a priest makes to a case he worked on once before and a sudden cut to the Annabelle doll's face. That, and the knowledge that Tony Amendola apparently plays the same priest here as in Annabelle, Father Perez.
It's all entertaining enough, but it's neither as memorable nor disturbing as such source material should be. The flick relies heavily on jump-scares and standard horror techniques, so much so that it often feels like a genre workshop for advanced students. Not that it's all "bad" as you might say, but it left me feeling terribly disappointed. After the bizarre madhouse-carnival ride that was The Nun -- a wonderful new aesthetic I'm really digging, a la IT -- I was expecting another stylistic novelty. I mean, just look at the poster below! Something in exaggerated colors and muted brightness, something that felt like a folktale come alive, something like a grounded ghost story worthy of the time and place of its setting. Instead, we get a typical mess of "boos" and "aahs" and watered-down watery spirits.
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