La Llorona (2019)

“What’s in the past is in the past”

Not to be confused with The Curse of La Llorona from the Conjuring universe, 2019’s La Llorona is a Guatemalan film by director Jayro Bustamante. The story reimagines the Weeping Woman folklore as a supernatural figure seeking revenge for the 1982 genocide of the Mayan population. The film opens with the testimony of a Mayan woman at the trial of fictional dictator Enrique Monteverde (based on actual dictator Efrain Rios Montt). When his conviction is overturned, mass protests gather outside his mansion, trapping him inside his home with his wife, his daughter, his granddaughter, and his maid.

Bustamante packed all kinds of magical realism into his movie. There’s a water motif that is just so beautiful and eerie, and adds to a building sense of claustrophobia. There isn’t any jump scares really, or exploitation gore, just a very creepy atmosphere as the characters reckon with their own pasts. I particularly appreciated the relationships between the different generations of women. As the patriarch of their family slips away from them, they are confronted with their own complicity in his crimes. Bustamante talked often in interviews about the lack of acknowledgement within his own country of their past, and hoped to use this fictional tale to bring these stories to the forefront. If only we could all summon a vengeful spirit to haunt the dictators!
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