However inspired by a rather eerie Latin American folktale, I find calling it a horror film not just misleading but quite reductive. As many traditional legends passed on over the centuries by word of mouth, La Llorona does tell of spirits and monsters, but they are more real and contemporary than we might like to think. Bluntly denouncing, if through fictional characters, blood-curdling historical events while unfolding an intense family drama, its absorbing narrative flow lets the unease crawl under our skin. Now magical, now raw and tense, it gives us the time to reflect, no matter where we are from, on our own culture and the common aberrations of our kind—the one we call human. La Llorona’s aesthetics and internal imagery are as impactful as the message it delivers. Cold tints prevail while the warm fill the tight visual space metaphorically given to the natives. Water and its creatures are used as signs of an unforgiving past resurfacing. Curtains and veils shape the mystery, the untold, the unspeakable. Particularly masterful is a scene where a Mayan woman candidly recounts her shocking experience at a trial. The camera slowly tracks back, almost defied as the atrocious details are being revealed. Only at the end, she uncovers her face from a beautifully embroidered veil. The truth is out, it won’t hide back any longer. Artfully, this shot mirrors the opening, where a lady that we’ll shortly know be the wife of the retired general accused of genocide, asks God for protection reciting a long, excruciating prayer. Her stare is blank, or aghast. We will know in a couple of hours, when ours will likely be the same.
