This requires several, well-crafted scenes where the audience is scared enough to be entertained, but not scared so much that they can’t be scared anymore. There are several scenes of horror throughout the film, each one building off the last, until the climax when the stakes are high and everything is ready to blow. With this cinematic style of horror, the scares are executed much in the same way that action scenes are in a superhero movie.
Unfortunately, it is in the execution of this type of horror that La Llorona falls the most short. That being said, La Llorona still adheres to the situational and atmospheric style of horror for which The Conjuring Universe is so well known. So while La Llorona is part of The Conjuring Universe, it behaves like an original horror flick. In fact, aside from one minor priest, every character in the film has to be introduced and developed within the narrative.
Unlike Annabelle or The Nun, The Curse of La Llorona did not have the benefit of having its lead villain introduced in another movie. That night, in Anna’s house where her children are sleeping, floorboards begin to creak. The mother of the children warns of a weeping woman, La Llorona, who murders children, telling Anna that La Llorona will come for her children next. The children are taken from the mother and given a place to stay for the night, but instead end up discovered dead from being drowned in a river. Anna Tate-Garcia is a case worker for child services who one day discovers a mother who has locked her children in a closet. The film takes place in the 1970s, around the same time as the two Conjuring films. The Curse of La Llorona is the latest entry into The Conjuring Universe.