REVIEW: Curse of the Weeping Woman a hit-miss horror flick that only rocks when its villain shocks

The Curse of the Weeping Woman is a distant cousin of the Conjuring and Annabelle franchises. But don’t let that totally put you off, there are some fair old frights here.

A mid-strength horror movie where the filler outranks the killer throughout, The Curse of the Weeping Woman is being touted in some quarters as a distant cousin of the Conjuring and Annabelle franchises.

Not sure this is the most attractive selling point after the similarly-pedigreed The Nun stunk out cinemas last year.

But if you are looking to collect the set, you may wish to be across such a fact.

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The filler outranks the killer in The Curse of the Weeping Woman. Picture: Warner Bros

But when the frights do come, it’s with a junk-laden jolt to the senses. Picture: Warner Bros

To be fair, when the frights do come in The Curse of the Weeping Woman, they administer a junk-laden jolt to the senses that cannot be denied.

Most of the good work here is handled by a sinister spectre infamous in Mexican folklore as a one-size-fits-all boogeywoman.

Known as La Llorona (played by Marisol Ramirez), this kooky spook gets around in a wedding dress and is always on the prowl for another kid to drown.

Centuries ago, she gave her own children a deadly dunk to teach her cheating husband a lesson. Now La Llorona is telepathically turning door handles and recklessly rearranging furniture in 1973 Los Angeles, where she has designs on the offspring of a single-mum social worker named Anna (Linda Cardellini).

That lake-sized swimming pool in Anna’s backyard hasn’t got a fence around it. Uh-oh.

As for her young children, son Chris (Roman Christou) and daughter Samantha (Jaynee Lynne Kinchen), they have this irreversible tendency to put themselves in dangerous places they have been explicitly instructed not to go near. Double uh-oh.

Linda Cardellini’s way of registering fear is making the face of someone who has just realised they may have left a hot appliance or two running before they left for work that morning.

The movie peaks whenever La Llorona hits the screen and becomes a snooze when she leaves.

The movie hits its peaks when La Llorona suddenly bursts into the frame (usually accompanied by a sound akin to an entire symphony orchestra being rapidly fed into a woodchipper) and hits the snooze button whenever she leaves.

Performances here ran the gamut from just passable to simply deplorable. As the nominal lead here, Cardellini’s effort shifts uncertainly between these two extremes.

Weirdly, she excels in the non-horror scenes, and underwhelms when the screenplay dials up the shocks and the shrieks.

It does not help that Cardellini’s way of registering fear is making the face of someone who has just realised they may have left a hot appliance or two running before they left for work that morning.

The late-breaking arrival of Raymond Cruz as Rafael, a cocky ex-priest-turned-ghostbuster, will extinguish the exasperation of many viewers.

This charismatic actor knows he has been given a pile of junk with which to ply his trade, and has a little fun with his dodgy role to make the time fly by that little bit faster.

THE CURSE OF THE WEEPING WOMAN (M)

Rating: Two and a half stars (2.5 out of 5)

Director: Michael Chaves (feature debut)

Starring: Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Marisol Ramirez, Patricia Velasquez.

Only solid when it goes to water

For all things movies, follow Leigh on Twitter @leighpaatsch

Originally published as REVIEW: Curse of the Weeping Woman a hit-miss horror flick that only rocks when its villain shocks