Review: The Curse of the Weeping Woman

It really doesn’t take much to get a spin-off from the Conjuring franchise. First Annabelle the evil doll got her own series (with a third movie due later this year), then that creepy nun from a painting had an origin story (that was actually kind of wacky), and now the Weeping Woman gets her time to shine in a solo outing. You remember her, she was... in one of the earlier films... being scary?

(it turns out the link isn't a previous appearance from her, but from Father Perez (Tony Amendola), who was in the first solo Annabelle movie)

Where The Nun borrowed heavily from Italian horror films and gothic thrillers, The Curse of the Weeping Woman returns to more familiar ground with a fairly standard haunting set in the 70s (which was we all know, was the scariest decade ever). Linda Cardellini is Anna Garcia, a single mum working as a social worker who steps in when she finds one of her clients has her children locked in a cupboard. Turns out that was to protect them from evil spirit La Llorona, who promptly drowns the kids then turns her evil gaze on Anna’s offspring. 

While there are a few brief scenes that suggest the social work angle is going to play a bigger part in what happens - the set-up that Anna will have her kids taken from her just like she took away her client's children is actually a pretty decent one - the film rapidly falls back into the usual exorcism rut. 

Whichever film came up with the idea that a ghost would attach itself to a person rather than a place (I'm going to say it was the first Paranormal Activity movie but I'm almost certainly wrong) deserves a thanks here yet again; remember the days when you'd spend half a haunted house movie thinking "just drive away you idiots"?

There’s really nothing surprising or original going on here and the film barely manages to get over the 90 minute mark (which, when you're just doing a basic exorcism movie, is for the best), But it does manage to deliver a few decent jump scares and a handful of creepy images, which is about all you can really expect. 

Cardellini’s solid performance as a mother so loving she still cares even when her dingbat kids mess up a banishing ritual just to grab a doll provides at least some reason to care about the usual slamming doors and spooky corridors. But as curses go, this is barely a "damn" at best.

- Anthony Morris