More like The Curse of Lori (you know, from the walking dead), because of how much you wonder why some of the characters just aren’t dead. (Its worth mentioning it’s hard to be clever with word play with a title like that).
Full Disclaimer: The movie in of itself was an enjoyable experience, and will keep you on the edge of your seats waiting for the next jump scare. I’m also not the best at name memorization, so I’m gonna be as indirect as possible.
Plot: A ghost lady continues her favorite guilty pleasure after death.
Review: Props to the first “monster” to have some level of productivity. Relentlessly she is either on screen attacking, or your waiting for her next appearance. That being said, she doesn’t have a clear motive. Its established she likes to drown kids. Shes good at drowning kids. She honestly has her dream job. But, at moments she just misses opportunities to drown kids. She is holding the protagonist’s daughter underwater in a bathtub, and just has to hold on for like half a minute (I don’t know how long it takes to drown a small girl) to kill her. She’s having the time of her life watching this girl struggle. But, just lets her go.
She appears to grab the daughter at one point by the pool and just lets her go with a magical disappearance. Just leaving her with burn marks on her hands. I’m no expert but a pool seems like an ideal drowning spot for a young girl.
Though, while it is easy to laugh at the faults of a demon mother ineffectively drowns kids, with great stamina, the human characters also behave interestingly. The grieving mother locks her kids in a closet with magic eyes drawn on the door, AND expects the cps lady to be okay with it with no explanation. Not to mention she convinced her kids to sit quietly in their, though to their defense in the 1970s lost of people were staying in the closet. Crazy lady also has the audacity to blame cps lady for letting her kids out of a closet, they probably would have spent their entire lives in, and getting murdered by a crazy demon lady. Then to have a priest magically smoke her personal evils away, without ever having asked him for help, or him seeing her magic wrist scars.
Also, shout out to the protagonist wearing only blue long sleeve shirts. Way to symbolize “Still grieving and slightly cold” into an article of clothing. At least it can dry quickly.
The protagonist’s daughter also risks everyone’s lives for a doll that she has not once actually been shown to care for. I refuse to believe that mother knows what toys the girl likes more than the girl does.
All characterization that happened for the two kids got summed down to, Girl likes reaching for things. Boy wants to be like dead dad. Then the movie blindly uses this too make simple plot developments, and nothing else. The girl in obvious ways. The boy just to adventure out of the car at the crime scene? It really seemed like this movie did a lot of minor things to buffer up and add story, which is only okay if what’s added actually adds to the story. There are too many details that are added then never revisited, or built upon.
Nice subtle way to include this movie into the conjuring universe, without directly impacting the conjuring universe. These subtle immersions are more of what the film world needs, to help expand a cinematic universe, without stories intertwining. Not to mention we now have the magical ability to make an entire body of water holy water, which has a nice comical appeal. I take back this appraisal if this is building up to a rated R ghost busters spin off against some super evil cgi baddy.
Quick Shout-outs
- Demon lady making sure girl’s hair is well soaked in shampoo
- Coworker/family friend, who’s sole purpose was to deliver pizza
- “Lets invite the cps lady to a crime scene”
- “Let’s take my kids to a crime scene”
- Poorly targeted cps worker that is just trying to help out
- Some honestly amazing jump scares (and I hate cheap jump scares)
- Body physics, need I say more?
- Great amount of exposure for a demonic presence to keep her scary, but not over expose.
- Perfect house for ghost haunting, furniture and all. Almost like it was designed for it…
- Ummmm no family dog?
- This movie literally took place in only a couple of days, I just can’t love that enough.
Favorite Thing: By far was the poolside scene with the umbrella. It was cinematic gold. The lighting, the prop positioning, the appearance of the La Llorona, it was perfect. There’s not a single thing I could have seen be improved. All I ever wanted in a horror movie, was captured perfectly in that one moment.
Movie Terranova-nalysis 