The Curse of La Llorona

The pre-Christian indigenous Mexican folktale of the maternal ghost woman whose children drowned, dooming her to roam in search of kids to take their place, is retold and set in the 1970s from first time director Michael Chaves. In Los Angeles, Anna (Linda Cardellini from Bloodlines) struggles as a social worker to raise her two kids after her policeman husband is killed in the line of duty. Anna ignores the distressed warnings by one of her clients whose kids have been truant from school that an elemental poltergeist is trying to steal her children, only to regret not listening. La Llorona, aka The Crying Woman/The Weeping Woman, has been the subject of numerous Mexican films, the first one being made in 1933 and then again as The Crying Woman in 1963. Seen as a harbinger of death much like a banshee, in this movie her powers have been upped to the level of Dracula as she has command of water and air, is able to glamour subjects and is repelled only by wood from the burning bush that was at the site where she drowned her own kids. There is a tenuous connection to The Conjuring Universe through Father Perez (Tony Amendola), who recommends a solution to these troubles.

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