Using his home country’s tragic history as a backdrop, Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante’s horror story is filled with political commentary and indigenous folk.

| Feb 14, 2023

You get the sense something otherworldly is going on, but Bustamante maintains a savvy ambiguity and never loses sight of his deeper aim – to lay bare his home country’s bloody and oppressive past.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 17, 2022

Without delving into mysticism, the film delivers great suspense supported in acting, sound and the beauty of not showing too much. I was amazed this genre-bending movie was actually a success. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 23, 2022

Whatever imperfections there are pale in comparison to the profound tension you feel as you watch the film. It's the rare film that services horror fans and general audiences alike.

| Original Score: 8/10 | May 17, 2022

Beautiful... poetic. [Full review in Spanish]

| Oct 21, 2021

...capture impeccably framed shots that are stirring to view by themselves, when paired with small nudges to the zoom and angle those same shots begin to cause a sense of...

| Original Score: 76/100 | Aug 19, 2021

From that deep pain, [Alma] will clean Enrique's house down to its foundation. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 3, 2021

Impeccably made. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 30, 2021

Like the house from Parasite (which feels like it had to be an influence) the rains will come, and keep on coming, until even their dreams drip with them.

| Original Score: A- | Jul 8, 2021

The demand for accountability and justice against corrupt leaders and systems has been spreading around the globe, and while movies have been reflecting these feelings more and more recently, none have made it so sadistically satisfying as La Llorona.

| Original Score: 4.5 / 5 | Jun 25, 2021

There's no need for a deep reading here - the film is all surface, but frequently beautifully, at least.

| Jun 5, 2021

La Llorona shows that the long road to reconciliation necessarily unsettles the carefully crafted justifications of those complicit in unspeakable crimes.

| Original Score: 10/10 | May 20, 2021

Loaded with symbolism turned into horror rmovie clichés. [Full review in Spanish]

| Apr 23, 2021

While the pacing is perhaps languorous to a fault, the contrast between controlled surfaces and what lies beneath resonates deeply, suggestive of sorrows that cannot be contained.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2021

Using prevalent horror tropes to internalize and exemplify the political discourse in the country, Jayro Bustamante cleverly subverts the pathos of both a horror film and a politically charged narrative

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 9, 2021

In Bustamante's sophisticated storytelling, the real horror seethes and bubbles, be it ever so gradually, in the heart of darkness of a male monster-figure who is to blame for countless crimes against the Indigenous community.

| Apr 5, 2021

The way in which it uses the mechanisms of genre to underline the obscure past of Guatemalan society is subtle, poetic and, to a certain extent, chilling. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 5, 2021

Commanding and compelling.

| Mar 19, 2021

Throughout, Bustamante proves himself a brilliant cinematic guide through history's barbarity.

| Mar 13, 2021

While there are moments of effective suspense, this isn't shooting for a typical horror tone. The terrors of this film are the realities of genocide -- for indigenous women in particular.

| Mar 11, 2021