Bad Directorial Analysis - The Curse of La Llorona

I think there are three types of bad movies; the self-loving bad movie, the self-aware bad movie, and the earnest bad movie. All three reflect very differently on their directors, and in the case of the self-loving bad movie, it’s a case where the director has been overridden by producers who just want money rather than creativity, or the director thinks their ideas are so great that they ignore legitimate criticisms in place of just doing what they want. The Curse of La Llorona is a bit of both.

The Curse of La Llorona is the 7th movie in the Conjuring horror movie franchise, which debuted to a 29% from critics and 37% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, and ended up on numerous critic’s lists for the worst films of 2019. Directed by Michael Chaves, making his cinematic debut after doing some short films, web series and a Billie Eilish video, it’s a mish-mash of jump scares and very misguided decisions.

Tribute Shots

The first directorial point I’m going to talk about is the cinematography. The movie is shot by Michael Burgess, who was the 2nd unit cinematographer on the previous Conjuring movies, and his work is…fine. Just fine. It’s not awful, but there are clear areas where Burgess and director Chaves should have gone in a different direction, in the “tribute shots”. What I mean is shots which directly tribute other movies in their style or content, like the Xenomorph skull in Predator 2.

Tribute shots are like insane Nicolas Cage performances – when put in proper context for his craziness, such as his possessed demon father in Mom and Dad, or his slowly going insane farmer in Color Out of Space, it can work quite effectively. But if his character is just a regular guy with no reason to act like a Viagra-fueled dynamo, it’s impossible to take the movie in any way seriously, and it overshadows any criticism of the actual filmmaking.

The above is a man broken by the rage of losing his wife to junkies. The below is a regular detective who feels the need to insanely yell at his ex-girlfriend about the condition of a doll he found. One doesn't quite justify the reaction.

In The Curse of La Llorona, the 1st scene after the prologue is a long, introductory take to the main characters, which is very similar to the long takes in Brian de Palma films such as Snake Eyes (which coincidentally also has a non-insane Nicolas Cage). But here, it’s just like “yeah, we can do a Brian de Palma style opening, we’re cool”. In Snake Eyes, the long take was to introduce us to the frenetic and forever moving nature of Las Vegas, but in The Curse of La Llorona, there’s nothing happening in the shot. There’s no reason for it to exist beyond a tribute and possibly a flex of filmmaking.

Another example is a shot where the camera is zooming into a door and spinning, very similar to a shot from Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead. But it’s so similar that it’s just a copy, rather than anything new, and it’s so distracting that it can annoy viewers enough that they don’t take notice of the serious aspects of the film. It would be far better if director Chaves came up with an original tactic to present this, considering his prior experience in VFX and editing, but just copying someone else with the intent of “tribute” is not good direction.

Effectively sums up this movie, including its scare tactics...

Use of jump scares

One thing that every critic noted in their reviews of this movie was the absolute overuse of jump scares. They’re frequent, annoying and lacking any real effort or creativity, and while jump scares can be used brilliantly, The Curse of La Llorona fatally misunderstands how to use them properly.

This is scarier than this movie.

As YouTuber Chris Stuckmann notes in this video, jump scares are used very poorly in modern horror, with the best ones actually being associated with things that are meant to be scary like a monster. But nowadays, everything that’s mildly startling, even if it’s just someone rounding a corner to suddenly bump into a friend, is accompanied by a ridiculous banshee orgasm scream sound.

In The Curse of La Llorona, there’s a ton of build-up to just a jump scare. Not only are there logical problems in the story, where the audience is tempted to yell “what the flip are you waiting for?” or something like that, but the scenes would be genuinely scarier without the ridiculous noise involved, just the use of sound to build tension. If there were no noise, we would be slowly shrinking back into our seats, not having our ears blown out by the surround sound. As for why Chaves does this, I think he is content to do jump scares because they are the easiest thing to do, and audiences clearly go to films with them, even though they hate them, apparently.

Something which understands this perfectly is Resident Evil 7. In that, all of the jump scares don’t involve something falling over or just screaming at you doing nothing, but something actually scary like an insane T-Virus hillbilly crashing through a wall coming straight for you. Otherwise, the tension is based purely off a strong use of decaying, visually sets to build up an atmosphere, all of which is genuinely scary. Similarly, A Quiet Place builds its jump scares around serious dramatic events in the lives of our leads, while mainly relying on minimalistic sound design and visuals to get the fear across. But La Llorona is content to just have jump scares and forget to give them any dramatic or storytelling backing, making them boring.

This is a problem which has affected all but three of the Conjuring films. The only ones which haven’t done this are the two Conjuring’s and Annabelle: Creation, all three associating their jump scares with something actually scary, and prioritising tension and visuals over loud noises. The others just go “bump” and call it a day, content to produce minimum content for maximum profit, which brings us to the next point…

Cheap filmmaking

The Curse of La Llorona presents one of the most divisive elements of modern horror – movies made for no budget which bring in what seems like low money, but is actually an impressive ROI considering the money sunk into making the movie. It was made for $9 million dollars, but made $123 million worldwide, thirteen and a bit times the budget. While this can be a great strategy for young filmmakers to break into the business, as Oren Peli, Dan Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez and even the Conjuring’s creator James Wan have proven, it’s also an excuse for studios such as Blumhouse and Platinum Dunes to pump minimum effort into making a film, because it will inevitably make back its budget.

This movie is a clear example of the latter, as it’s shot mostly in one location or a couple of streets in L.A. which no-one happens to be in at the time. Rather than coming off as an invention people had to make sacrifices and be clever to make it, it seems like a product from an assembly line, which comes forth very clearly in the direction. While Michael Chaves is clearly being influenced by the studio at this point to do as little as possible for an inevitable hit, this is clearly an opportunity where he could have at least tried to override the studio on several occasions where he could have been far more creative, as he has demonstrated in his previous films.

It’s also very clear that Chaves is content to just copy James Wan’s style without investing his own creative forces/producing power into it. There’s the same use of long takes, the same use of intense angled close-ups, and even Wan’s penchant for putting classic horror movies/books/shows in the background of his shots. He could at least try to put in some of the creative energy he showed in Chase Champion, or instead of putting on old Scooby-Doo in the background, he could put on Troll 2 or Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2’s “Garbage Day” scene as a way of subverting Wan’s weird tic. But minimum money, and therefore effort is put into this film.

What a missed opportunity to tribute this instead of some respected classic. Come on.

Guys, to sum up, Michael Chaves is a director who probably shouldn’t have made his debut in a franchise known for suffocatingly managing its directors, but he still should have tried to put more energy into the film instead of relying on previous tropes and vain tributes to far better films. He has some talent with actors, and he can decently choreograph a scene, but beyond that, there’s little promise in The Curse of La Llorona.

Sorry for this, Mike, but your movie sucks.

What bad movies would you like me to give a directorial analysis about? There are plenty out there, and the next one I’ll do will maybe concern Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which I hated. Leave your answers in the comments or e-mail me.