Shudder recently added Guatemalan filmmaker Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona to a growing list of strong films on the platform this summer. The film focuses on Don Enrique, a dictator put on trial to answer for war crimes and the genocide of the country’s indigenous people under his command. After accepting no responsibility and suffering from a sick spell, Enrique is eventually allowed to return home with his family, only to find their house is surrounded by protestors at all hours. His health declines, his paranoia climbs, and he begins to hear the cries of a woman at night. Worried that he’s having a mental break, his family hires in another maid to help keep things together. Enrique continues to believe he’s haunted, and his family begin to have nightmares of their own. Is this all a result of stress, or has the wailing woman come to pay comeuppance to and evil man?
After seeing Joko Anwar’s Impetigore this year, I thought it was far and away going to be the best film I got from Shudder in 2020. La Llorona hit me out of nowhere, especially with the terrible reception of The Curse of La Llorona that hit theaters last year. I had to do a double take to make sure this wasn’t that film. The folklore of “The Wailing Woman” is not new in cinema, with films about it dating back as early as the 1930’s. Jayro Bustamante may have just given us the best adaptation we could hope for.
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This is going to be a weird place to start, but I really want to talk about the lighting. It was perfect. We as horror fans take for granted how important lighting and camera work is in a movie that is supposed to scare us. Either scenes are too bright, and we see everything before it happens, or they’re too dark and we’re left wondering what we just watched. Bustamante gets the lighting, sound, and cinematography on-point from jump street. These are especially important in slow burn horror like La Llorona, because intensity must be built throughout the film, giving you and equal amount of comfort and anxiety. While some may point out a film’s lighting as the first positive notation means the other aspects are bad, that is not the case here. It just truly is an aspect of brilliant filmmaking.
The acting was phenomenal on all fronts and helped hammer in the relevancy of the story. Most of us are familiar with the abuse of power and corruption in our government. Sometimes seeing the way things are unfolding in the United States makes us feel like we’re in a bubble, and that political and military corruption doesn’t happen everywhere. Unfortunately, it’s something we face as a human race, not just a specific area. The detail the cast put into their characters was a harsh reminder and made me detest, empathize, and grieve with them all.
Like most films that use folklore as a base, La Llorona focuses far more on the story aspect than anything else. If you’re looking for gore or jump scares, this isn’t the film for you. This is a haunting tale, and it does exactly what it’s designed to do, haunt you. Even for a slow burn, the film’s pace is excellent, with credit to its storytelling. It’s not long, but even if it was, you’re so absorbed into what will happen next, that the time flies by. From someone that loves slow burn horror, that is a gift to us.
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La Llorona concludes with a satisfying delivery. We are awarded the answers for the questions we had throughout the film, and with a little taste for what’s going to happen next. It is the first time in a while where I wanted to restart the movie as soon as it ended.
Lastly, I do want to point out that all the language in La Llorona is Spanish. I know that reading subtitles turns off a lot of viewers, but I implore you to work toward putting that fear aside. In 2019, during Bong Joon Ho’s acceptance speech for Best Picture, he said, “Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” We all saw how fantastic Parasite was, and his statement rings true here as well. Bustamante’s La Llorona drew best picture nominations at the London, Tokyo, Venice and Chicago International Film Festivals last year. It ended up winning at the Bergin International Film Festival in Norway. Don’t sleep on this film!
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