Director: Michael Chaves
Year: 2019
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural Slasher
Plot:
Working for a truancy case, a single mother finds the situation has brought her and her children into the realm of influence of a deadly Mexican folktale known as the La Llorona, a figure that targets children and must rely on a native spirit-healer to protect her children from the spirit.
Review:
This one was far better than expected. One of the films’ better features here is the overall impressive and strong technical features that make the film very sleek and professional-looking. The atmosphere of the shots here, from the afflicted kids wandering through the hallways in the asylum where the flickering lights hide the spirit, the confrontation at the crime scene of the children where her kids find the ghostly figure waiting for them or the spirit arriving at her house and toying with her and her kids throughout the night manage to be appropriately chilling and full of high-budget studio gloss. As these scenes then allow the continuous reliance on jump scares featuring the ghost to pop-up out of the shadows, from behind billowing curtains or reflected in water have a greater impact due to the thrilling atmosphere.
With that atmosphere in place, the second half of the film concentrates on chilling supernatural scenes of the spirit targeting the family. As the attacks get more personal and dangerous, such as the drowning attempt in the bathtub while thinking she’s actually the mother coming to help bathe her or the woman getting attacked by the spirit, there’s plenty of back-and-forth encounters here as the religious undertones and black magic they turn to in order to stop her gives this one some frantic, hard-hitting encounters. As the action here picks up around the house and it gets even tenser as the kids get into more danger as well, this picks up nicely even though this section tends to highlight some generic sequence. Showing them being dragged along the ground by invisible forces, thrown with supernatural force into walls or being so overwhelmed in the use of CGI for the demon manipulating the environment that most of these genre efforts feature.
The cast here helps to sell that even further. Linda Cardellini is fantastic as Anna, the mother who's caught up in the spirits' wrath. A single mother who's at the end of her rope stressing over her kids on top of trying to stay at the top of her job and it's requirements, she comes off as incredibly sympathetic and believable as she turns in the final half to become the fierce fighter looking to save her children as this section adds plenty of emotional fury to her that leads into the finale. Her children, Roman Christou as the older Chris and Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen as the younger Samantha perform their roles incredibly well. They end up ranging from the scared little kids unaware of what the shadowy figure they start seeing is really doing to using their smarts to try to outwit the spirit, although the finale brings them into too much run-and-hide-screaming territory. With Raymond Cruz being fine as mystic Rafael Olvera who comes off without much of an impression, this fits the roll of a big-budget mainstream genre effort.
The other great aspect of this one is the fantastic storyline here taking these characters and merging everything together into a chilling whole. That the initial introduction to the spirit through her work causes the torment o the abduction and outcome of the family which gives the spirit a new target in the kids follows a predictable and worthwhile setup. That the spirits targets begin to affect not only the family but her as well, as the spirit also being a mother looking for her own children thinking hers are the next target adds a wholly impressive backdrop for the finale. The idea of a mother fighting to save her kids from a spirit trying to kill her to take away her children is a powerful theme that runs through the final confrontations, and when added to the influence of Mexican folklore and culture raises the film significantly and giving this one a lot to like overall.
Overview: ****.5/
A fun and impressive mainstream genre effort that has very little wrong with it, this one manages to be incredibly watchable even with a few minor and not all that detrimental issues that hold this one back. Give this a shot if you're a fan of the franchise or the creature or a fan of the big-budget, mainstream genre fare while those that don't appreciate those factors should heed caution.
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