La Llorona

"The past will haunt you."

2019 1h 37m ES

😐

6.4

MID

🔥

96%

CERTIFIED FRESH

👌

METACRITIC

⭐

6.6

IMDB

★6.4TMDB · 384🍅96%Rotten Tomatoes●79Metacritic★6.6IMDB · 8,797

ThrillerHorrorDrama

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

Accused of the genocide of Mayan people, retired general Enrique is trapped in his mansion by massive protests. Abandoned by his staff, the indignant old man and his family must face the devastating truth of his actions and the growing sense that a wrathful supernatural force is targeting them for his crimes.

“The past will haunt you.”

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Cast

María Mercedes Coroy
Alma
Sabrina De La Hoz
Natalia
Margarita Kénefic
Carmen
Julio Díaz
Enrique
María Telón
Valeriana
Juan Pablo Olyslager
Letona
Ayla-Elea Hurtado
Sara
Enrique Argüello
Abogado

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Jayro Bustamante
Writers: Lisandro Sanchez, Jayro Bustamante
Languages: Spanish
Countries: Guatemala, France

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Released 7 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

International production across 2 countries: Guatemala, France.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

AWARDS

Did you know

Directed by Jayro Bustamante, shot by Nicolás Wong. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Pascual Reyes. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Gustavo Matheu shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

CAST

Did you know

María Mercedes Coroy and Sabrina De La Hoz and Margarita Kénefic carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "The past will haunt you.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt10767168 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Jayro Bustamante directs. Nicolás Wong behind the camera. Pascual Reyes scores. Gustavo Matheu cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Produced in Guatemala, France. Dialogue in Spanish.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Released 7 years ago.
2International production across 2 countries: Guatemala, France.
3Directed by Jayro Bustamante, shot by Nicolás Wong. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
4Original score by Pascual Reyes. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
5Editor Gustavo Matheu shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
6María Mercedes Coroy and Sabrina De La Hoz and Margarita Kénefic carry the top of the cast.
7Marketing tagline: "The past will haunt you.".
8IMDB entry: tt10767168 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
9Classified under 8 themes, including "war crimes", "dictator", "trial", "genocide".

The technical file

Cinematography: Nicolás Wong
Original score: Pascual Reyes
Editing: Gustavo Matheu
Production design: Sebastián Muñoz
Costume design: Beatriz Lantán
Makeup / hair: Eva Ravina
Runtime: 97 min · 1h 37m
Status: Released
Box office: $294,404
Original language: ES
Certification (US): NR
IMDB: La Llorona (2019)
Rotten Tomatoes: 96% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 79/100
IMDB rating: 6.6/10 · 8,797 votes
MPAA: Not Rated

Awards

28 wins & 60 nominations total

Also by

Jayro Bustamante

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

Community reviews

What people are saying

tmdb280390232022-08-30
★ 8/10
"The fantastic level and the realistic level are the two levels upon which we live," Richard Burton said in The Night of the Iguana. La Llorona — not to be confused with the Curse/Legend of La Llorona — operates equally well on both levels, which in this case we might re-label the legendary level and the historical level. Enrique Monteverde (Julio Díaz) is an aging, infirm, and paranoid Guatemalan dictator (but then aren’t they all, eventually?) who at the beginning of the film is being tried for the genocide of Ma-yan natives in the 1980s. We see two trial scenes; the most effective is a zoom-in of a K'iche' Mayan indigenous woman giving testimony of the atrocities she witnessed, and to which she was subjected, by soldiers of the Guatemalan army while an interpreter translates her words, ending with: “I am not ashamed to tell what happened to me; I hope you are not ashamed to impart justice” (ironically, the judges refer to her as “witness 82”, dehumanizing her even further). Monteverde (based on Efraín Ríos Montt, a real-life Guatemalan war criminal) is found guilty, but the verdict is overturned and he is allowed to return home to his wife Carmen (Margarita Kenéfic),his daughter Natalia (Sabrina De La Hoz), and his granddaughter Sara (Ayla-Elea Hurtado) (Carlos,Sara’s father, whom Enrique and Carmen did not approve of, disappeared under circumstances that are mysterious only to Natalia). All the house servants have resigned except Valeriana (María Telón), whom Carmen suspects is Enrique's illegitimate daughter, and bodyguard Letona (Juan Pablo Olyslager). Meanwhile, the people have gathered around the house to protest day and night, effectively keeping the family under siege. It is then that the mysterious and silent native Alma (María Mercedes Co-roy) arrives, the new servant of whom Sara quickly grows fond. La Llorona is not a literal depiction of the Hispanic-American legend, but alludes to it through related imagery, for instance when Alma teaches Sara to hold her breath underwater. Monteverde sometimes wanders around the house at night claiming to hear a woman crying, but this could be a consequence of his deteriorating mental state. The title of the film may be a reference to the massacre in the village of La Llorona in 1981 or, in general, intended to represent Guatemala as a mother mourning the disappearance and murder of thousands of her children. The ending of the film, however, makes it clear that supernatural forces are also at play. I’m ambivalent about this aspect of the plot. On the one hand it’s almost unnecessary; this material is very powerful on its own, and the addition of a fantasy element risks detracting from the harsh reality it deals with. But on the other hand, and this is very unfortunate, revenge from beyond the grave is the closest Monteverde is going to come to paying for his crimes, and in real life we don't even have that con-solation (and it would be foolish to seek retribution for real-world grievances in a work of fiction, as Tarantino has done recently; by making Monteverde a stand-in for Ríos Montt, but not Ríos Montt himself, co-writer/director Jayro Bustamante avoids the revisionist pitfalls of, say, Inglorious Basterds). Fortunately, this internal debate is moot because La Llorona is the rare horror film that doubles as social criticism and hits the mark squarely in each endeavor; this is thinking man’s horror cinema (I was going to write that La Llorona would be something like The Official (Ghost) Story, but actually there are ghosts too in Luis Puenzo's film; figuratively or literally, there always are in this kind of story). Bustamante has created a work of art that one can approach from either of two different sets of narrative values, and each of them is a winning approach all the way from its opening scene to the spi-ne-chilling wail that closes it.
r96sk2025-02-22
★ 6/10
<em>'La Llorona'</em> is too slow paced for my liking, it most certainly isn't a bad film though. I just couldn't lock on to what I was watching, every now and then it would hook me in but then I mostly detached again not long later. That's a shame, because there is goodness in this. It's more political drama than horror, not that the latter element is absent but I was anticipating more supernatural to this. That's mostly on me admittedly, probably not helped by the fact that I saw <em>'The Curse of La Llorona'</em> (also 2019, curiously) last month; that is a more typical horror flick, which I (unlike most) liked fwiw. No-one truly stands out from the cast, though Sabrina De La Hoz, Margarita Kenéfic, María Mercedes Coroy and Julio Díaz do warrant fair praise. If we're talking merit, those behind the actors offscreen would deserve just as much as those front and centre; it is a well shot flick. for example. Not bad, just not good. In my eyes, of course.
patient12025-10-19
★ 6/10
Quite the Haunting introduction to the film. This telling of the story is horrific and quite heartbreaking, as any who watch will have to hear to believe. 1st Guatemalan telling for me and its story is beyond distressing, I can only imagine the Horror to come into play soon. The pain of guilt or pure hysteria, either are giving off such a horrifically haunting vibe. Either Madness has set in or the mystical is starting to appear, things are finally starting to come to light possibly. Fantastic story of Pain and Suffering