Play Director Michael Chaves assembles some suitably suspenseful set-pieces, particularly whenever it’s just the kids going up against La Llorona (most notably the scene in the family car and another one where poor Samantha thinks it’s mommy washing her hair). While the film treats Rafael as a minor league substitute for the Warrens, he nevertheless capably serves his function as its tropey paranormal investigator/spirit world warrior.
They receive an ally - and the film a welcome jolt of puckishness - in Rafael Olvera (a sincere Raymond Cruz), a curandero (a traditional healer) whose old school arsenal against La Llorona generates a few chuckles but his deadpan machismo even more so. Simply put, you care about this family and want to see them make it through this ordeal okay. Together, these three actors make for a sympathetic and believable family unit that roots this otherworldly movie in the human and the relatable. Cardellini has good chemistry with Roman Christou and Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen, who ably play her children Chris and Samantha, respectively. This life experience gives her a bit more edge than the Conjuring-verse’s usually suburban or otherwise heretofore untried protagonists. Play Cardellini brings a steeliness and world-weariness to Anna, who was a cop’s wife and is an urban social worker, both of which means she’s already dealt with fear and horrors completely separate from the occult variety. Turns out Patricia wasn’t crazy or abusive towards her kids - she was protecting them from La Llorona! Anna will learn that, as the old adage goes, no good deed goes unpunished. (A supporting character from that film, Father Perez, pops up here to provide the bare minimum of connective narrative tissue between the films.) A solid Linda Cardellini anchors the proceedings as Anna Tate-Garcia, a recently widowed social worker whose tragic intervention in the child welfare of the sons of the disturbed Patricia Alvarez (Patricia Velasquez) unleashes the titular spirit after Anna’s own children. After a brief but brutal prologue set in 1673 Mexico - where we see how “The Weeping Woman” of Latin American folklore came to be by drowning her own children in a jealous rage, thus cursing herself to roam forever as a specter searching for other kids to kill - the film resumes in Los Angeles 1973, a period which Conjuring-verse fans will know is not long after the events of the LA-based Annabelle.
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