The Curse of La Llorona (R)
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I think there is some dispute as to whether or not this movie is actually part of the Conjuring universe, but there is an allusion at one point to the doll Annabelle. So I guess I'll vaguely side with anyone who does include it in that universe. Either way, though, it's not really important, and I don't particularly care whether it is or isn't really a Conjuring movie. I'm not sure when I first heard of the folk legend of La Llorona, but it must have been some years before this movie came out in 2019. Still, I don't know that much about her, so it's always nice to see something new about her. But this probably isn't the best representation of the legendary figure, mainly because the main characters in the story aren't Latino. So that's a point against the movie. But I did find it reasonably scary, so that's a point in its favor. Mostly it's about a ghost or whatever, but there are a couple of genuinely scary non-supernatural parts of the film.

It starts with a scene in Mexico in 1673. We see a woman who drowns her two sons, and later we'll learn that she became La Llorona, who seeks out more children to kill over the centuries. Most of the movie is set in 1973 Los Angeles. There's a child protective services caseworker named Anna Tate-Garcia (Linda Cardellini), a widow with two young children named Chris and Samantha. One day she's checking on the truant sons of a woman named Patricia Alvarez, and finds the boys locked in a closet, with burns on their wrists. (Actually I don't remember if both sons had the burns or just one of them. But it's not important.) The children get taken away, but later end up dead. Patricia is arrested for their murder, despite having an alibi. She blames Anna for her sons' deaths, claiming she was only trying to protect them from La Llorona. Later, Anna learns a bit about the folk legend from a priest named Father Perez, a character who had been in the movie "Annabelle" before this.

Soon, Chris and Sam begin encountering La Llorona, who marks them with the same burns (from having been grabbed) as Patricia's sons. Eventually Anna also encounters La Llorona, and seeks help from Father Perez, who sends her to see a former priest named Rafael Olvera, who deals with these kinds of supernatural situations. So he helps the Garcias dispel the evil spirit.

And I guess that's all I want to reveal of the plot. It's not a great movie, but it was okay.