31 Days of Halloween 2019: The Curse of La Llorona

[Once again I'm going to attempt to do a horror(ish) movie review a day for the entire month of October. I've done this the last few years on The Cleveland Movie Blog. Most of the time I succeeded. Other times I didn't. We'll see if I can pull it off this year.] 

Review by Bob Ignizio

THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA is based on the Mexican folk legend of the crying woman, said to be the spirit of a woman who drowned her two sons and is now condemned to wander the earth looking for her children, murdering other kids along the way. Widowed social worker Anna Tate-Garcia (Linda Cardellini) doesn’t believe her client Patricia (Patricia Velásquez) when she says the reason she has locked her children in their room is to protect them from this vengeful spirit. She thinks they’re being abused, and with the help of police backup frees the kids.

Later that night, Anna gets a call that the children have died, drowned in a river. In shock, but still forcing herself to do her job, Anna heads to the crime scene with her own kids, Chris (Roman Christou) and Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen) in tow.

31 Days of Halloween 2018: 'The Haunting Of Hill House' Presents Us With A Different Kind Of Spectre

[Once again I'm going to attempt to do a horror(ish) movie review a day for the entire month of October. I've done this the last few years on The Cleveland Movie Blog. Most of the time I succeeded (usually with the help of a few other writers). Other times I didn't. We'll see if I can pull it off this year.] 

Unlike past film adaptations in 1963 and 1999 that went by the title THE HAUNTING, the new Netflix limited series ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ uses the full title of the Shirley Jackson novel on which it is ostensibly based. Do not mistake this as an indication of greater fidelity to the source material. If anything, this latest version should be considered more of an “inspired by” than an “adapted from”.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. I’ve always been of the mind that when a band does a cover tune or a filmmaker does a remake, if they don’t have something new and fresh to bring to the table, what’s the point? And if nothing else, series creator/director/writer Mike Flanagan has plenty of new ideas he wants to incorporate into this tale.

31 Days of Halloween 2018: These 'Ghost Stories' Can Even Scare A Skeptic

[Once again I'm going to attempt to do a horror(ish) movie review a day for the entire month of October. I've done this the last few years on The Cleveland Movie Blog. Most of the time I succeeded (usually with the help of a few other writers). Other times I didn't. We'll see if I can pull it off this year.]  

 Despite being an avid, long time horror fan, the truth is very few horror movies scare me. Like anyone, a good jump scare can startle me, and some of the more boundary-pushing films out there most definitely disturb and/or disgust me. But in terms of shivers-down-the-spine terror, not much gets to me.

GHOST STORIES got to me. More than once.

Written and directed by Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dawson, GHOST STORIES is a British horror anthology film. It’s in the tradition of similar films that were in their prime in the 1970’s when Amicus studios released such titles as THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD and DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORROR. But with its subtler brand of ghostly thrills and chills, it owes more of a debt to 1941’s DEAD OF NIGHT.