The Curse of La Llorona is a 2019 horror film by Michael Chaves about a caseworker whose children are hunted by the Weeping Woman.
At a Glance
- Director: Michael Chaves (feature debut)
- Writers: Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis
- Producers: James Wan, Gary Dauberman, Emile Gladstone
- Cast: Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Patricia Velásquez, Roman Christou, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen, Marisol Ramirez, Tony Amendola, Sean Patrick Thomas
- Release: March 15, 2019 (SXSW premiere); April 19, 2019 (United States)
- Runtime: 93 minutes
- Studio: New Line Cinema, Atomic Monster and Emile Gladstone Productions, distributed by Warner Bros.
- Franchise: Set within The Conjuring universe
- Also known as: The Curse of the Weeping Woman
Overview
The legend of La Llorona, the mother who drowned her children and now wanders the waterways weeping for them, is one of the best known ghost stories in Latin America. James Wan’s Atomic Monster brought it to the big screen as a compact, jump-scare-driven chiller set in 1973 Los Angeles. Although director Chaves has said it is not an official Conjuring film, the return of Father Perez from Annabelle places it in the same world. Critics were unkind, but audiences turned up, and the modest film became one of the more profitable horror releases of its year.
Plot
The prologue is set in Mexico in 1673. A boy gives his mother a necklace, and later watches in horror as she drowns his brother in a stream; he tries to run, and she catches him too.
Three centuries later, Anna Tate-Garcia, a widowed caseworker for child services, checks on Patricia Alvarez, whose sons have stopped attending school. Anna finds the boys locked in a closet, has Patricia arrested and moves the children to a shelter despite their pleas to stay inside the protected room. That night they follow a weeping woman in white and are found drowned in the river. When Anna answers the call, her own son, Chris, leaves the car and is grabbed by the same figure, which leaves burns on his arm.
Patricia, though cleared of the killings, admits she prayed to La Llorona to take Anna’s children in exchange for her own. The attacks escalate: Sam, Anna’s daughter, is nearly drowned in the bath, and Anna is marked as well. A priest, Father Perez, recalls a case involving a cursed doll and sends Anna to Rafael Olvera, a former priest who now practices as a curandero.
Spoiler: The Ending
Rafael fortifies the house with folk remedies and blessed objects, and the family spends a night under siege. Patricia arrives with a gun and tries to hand the children over, but relents when she sees another mother about to suffer what she did. Chris calms the spirit by holding up her old necklace, and for a moment La Llorona looks human and touches him as if he were her son. A mirror breaks the spell. Anna drives a cross carved from the riverside tree that witnessed the original drownings into the ghost’s chest, destroying her. Rafael leaves, and the film ends on a puddle by the road, hinting the story may not be over.
Production
New Line announced the project in October 2017 under the title The Children, with Wan and Dauberman producing; it became The Curse of La Llorona by July 2018. Linda Cardellini was cast as the mother, and principal photography wrapped in November 2017. Composer Joseph Bishara, a regular collaborator with Wan, wrote the score.
Place in Franchise
The Conjuring universe connection is slight, limited to Tony Amendola’s Father Perez and a flashback reference to the Annabelle doll, so the film works as a standalone ghost story. Its real legacy is commercial: made for $9 million, it opened at number one with $26.5 million and grossed about $123 million worldwide, and roughly half of its opening audience was Hispanic. Chaves went on to direct The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and The Nun II, and a follow-up, The Revenge of La Llorona, was announced in 2025.
Trivia
- It was Michael Chaves’ first feature as director.
- Tony Amendola reprises Father Perez from Annabelle (2014).
- Raymond Cruz, who plays Rafael, is set to return in the sequel.
- Some international markets released it as The Curse of the Weeping Woman.
- Linda Cardellini was nominated for Most Frightened Performance at the 2019 MTV Movie & TV Awards.
- A Montreal cinema once mistakenly screened it for an audience expecting Detective Pikachu.