Enough to make you weep
THE latest monster-ofthe-week movie in the Conjuring franchise feels like little more than a placeholder to keep fans on the hook while they await the next Annabel movie.
The Curse of the Weeping Woman is such a dull example of paint-by-numbers filmmaking that it might actually be a perfect exemplar of its genre — not for being scary, but simply for its fanatical adherence to every rule, trick, trope and cliche of jump-scare horror.
That isn’t to say it didn’t surprise me occasionally. It did trick me a couple of times, and there were a few chilling moments. But when you look at it as a whole package, the movie could have easily been stamped out of some giant machine on a horror movie production line.
Anna (Linda Cardellini) is a case worker for child protection services in Los Angeles in 1973, and when she is called to the home of a woman suspected of abusing her children, she finds the kids locked in a closet covered in strange drawings.
But she misinterprets the situation and ignores the frantic warnings of the mother, unwittingly unleashing a deadly curse on her own home and her own
two children: La Llorona, the evil “weeping woman” who steals children from their mothers.
The law of diminishing returns is in full effect for the Conjuring universe. Created by Australian horror writer/ director/producer James Wan (creator of the Saw series), the first Conjuring movie was an excellent piece of vintage-style horror, a ghost story that invoked the glory days of its genre in the 1970s, echoing the likes of The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror.
The Conjuring 2 was, well, it was pretty good. But things slid downhill pretty quickly with the Annabel spin-offs, a couple of wholly unnecessary movies about a creepy doll.
The Nun, released last year, was almost a return to form: stylish and creepy, it was a bit too formulaic to be truly scary, but it was at least fun to watch.
The Curse of the Weeping Woman almost falls into the same category. It has a very polished style with a nicely vintage look and feel, and has some moments of being quite creepy.
But it’s just not very scary and it relies so heavily on a predictable horror movie formula and lazy jump scares that there just isn’t anything particularly shocking about it.
Also, Wan only serves as producer on this one, farming out the job of writing to a team of others, and appointing firsttime feature director Michael Chaves to direct, which might be a kind of training-wheels task ahead of Chaves directing The Conjuring 3, due for release next year.
Like the others in the series, though, The Curse of the Weeping Woman does a pretty good job of capturing its period, and the film has a great 1970s aesthetic that feels authentic without being overplayed, and it still reminded me of the classic horror flicks from that time.
There are a few things that didn’t make a lot of sense, though. To start with, Anna must have some very forgiving — or very deaf — neighbours, since the whole story takes place in their suburban home and no matter how much screaming, roaring, slamming of doors or backyard demonic wrestling takes place, not once does anyone come outside to see what the commotion is about, and nobody calls the police.
And when her kids (played by Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen and Roman Christou) have their first encounters with the Weeping Woman, they quite bizarrely say nothing to their mother. Even at the time it seemed very odd that they would not say anything, because they had no reason not to. I assumed there might be some reason for it that would be revealed later, but there wasn’t, it was just something that made no sense.
Cardellini’s performance is rather good, though, certainly at a level way above what is required by a schlocker of this calibre. That is good, because without her relatable and compelling performance anchoring the story, it might have been totally unwatchable.
Raymond Cruz is also wonderful as Rafael, a former priest turned spiritual healer who Anna enlists to help her to defeat the evil spirit haunting her family. He is so stoic and stern, yet his unflappable nature is still played for laughs occasionally, which works very well.
And he gets a hilarious call-back line in the closing scenes that is the highlight of the whole film.
Overall, though, the movie just feels like large bits or it weren’t cooked properly.
It opens doors too early. We see the monster very clearly very early in the movie and from that point on it’s just a matter of “Where will she pop up next?” There’s no sense of mystery or discovery about the monster, it’s just “Oh, there she is again, screaming.”
That’s not a horror movie, it’s an amusement park ghost train ride. Yawn.
The Curse of the Weeping Woman (M) is now showing at Village Cinemas. Rating: