Movie Review: 'The Legend of La Llorona' is an Unintentional Laugh Riot

The Legend of La Llorona is a laugh riot. I busted a gut watching The Legend of La Llorona but, unfortunately, that’s not exactly what the makers of the film had in mind for an audience response. The latest iteration of the Mexican legend of the weeping woman who curses and steals children is not intended to be a comedy. The intention was to make a horror movie and the team behind The Legend of La Llorona failed this intention in spectacularly silly fashion.

The Legend of La Llorona stars Autumn Reeser and Antonio Cupo as Carly and Andrew Candlewood, a couple vacationing in Mexico and trying to recover from the recent loss of a baby that died in childbirth. They are traveling to Mexico with their 9 year old son Daniel much to the dismay of their caretaker, Mama Veronica (Angelica Lara), who was not expecting them to bring a child with them. Children in this area of Mexico have been going missing for years and Mama Veronica is worried for the child while also concerned that the parents will think she’s crazy if she explains why she is so worried.

Far less worried is Jorge (Danny Trejo), a friendly and gregarious cab driver who tells the family that as long as they stay near Mama Veronica’s house, they should be fine. Naturally, the family immediately fails to heed Jorge’s advice and they take Danny for a walk near the river, even after having seen numerous warnings about missing children and having been warned by Jorge about the prevalence of Mexican drug gangs in the area.

Danny is almost immediately snatched by La Llorona, a woman in a flowing white dress who emerges from the river to grab Danny and who then runs away when his parents come running. This will be a pattern throughout the early portion of The Legend of La Llorona. Despite being capable of making children vanish into thin air, La Llorona is terrified of adults and runs away when they come around. That is until La Llorona starts to inexplicably grow in power and becomes a threat to adults? I mean kind of, not really, sort of.

The makers of The Legend of La Llorona seem to have no clue how to modulate the power of their big bad. La Llorona grows and weakens in power at the whim of the story. La Llorona can be shot and appear to feel physical pain and can inflict physical pain and even death but is then easily defeatable. The choices are all weird and wonky and often quite hilarious. A scene of La Llorona inside Mama Veronica’s house features La Llorona as a ghost that is repeatedly shot by Danny Trejo’s Jorge. The sight of a ghost being shot with a shotgun is very funny, especially with the dime store special effects that create La Llorona.

The biggest laugh of The Legend of La Llorona comes not long after this shotgun chase sequence. There is a photo in the hallway of a family that is behind the curse that created La Llarona. When La Llorona sees the picture in the hallway, the ghost stops, stares, tilts her head like a confused cat while staring at the photo and then begins to paw at the photo with her fingernails as if trying to scratch the photo like a kitty cat. I laughed way too hard at this scene. It’s supposed to be tense with our hero, Carly, fleeing for her life down this hallway but the scratching at the photo is so outlandish and silly that it breaks any minor bit of suspense or excitement that might have been generated in this moment. It's so funny!

Much like Gretchen Wieners tried and failed to make Fetch happen, filmmakers keep trying and failing to make La Llorona happen. This is the third time in four years in which I have seen a La Llorona movie and while the 2020 iteration of La Llorona from director Jayro Bustamante wasn’t bad, the 2019 version with actress Linda Cardellini in the lead, The Curse of La Llorona, was nearly as much of a howler as this latest take on the character. I seriously doubt that any filmmaker will truly make La Llarona a viable franchise but, then again, I never thought we would see so many versions of The Grudge or The Ring, so what do I know?

Regardless of anything, if you want to laugh derisively at a truly misguided film, The Legend of La Llorona is a wonderfully unintentionally hilarious attempt at a horror movie. The Legend of La Llorona will be available for on-demand rental on January 11th, 2022.