Colm Prunty

La Llorona

March 23, 2025 | 1 Minute Read

I really meant to look up the history of Guatemala after watching this, but I definitely have not done it. Nonetheless, I presume it’s all factual. Similar in feel to The Zone of Interest, we’re in the house of the bad guys, who don’t consider themselves the bad guys. Specifically in this case, a general who has been convicted of genocide, stuck with his family in his mansion as an enormous protest lives outside. All of his staff (except one) has quit because, well, he genocided their ethnic group, and so he has to hire someone new who may or may not be a ghost.

I came into this thinking it was a straightforward horror movie (possibly thinking of the completely unrelated Curse of La Llorona that came out somehow the same year) but really it was about politics and guilt. There are the tiniest cracks in the front the family put up - the general’s wife having dreams that cause her to wet the bed - but mostly they try and resist until the bitter end. The sound design is amazing, the noise of the protest outside is in every scene, bathing everything. It only gets explicitly horror-y near the very end, and by then you’re on the side of the ghosts.