Phonearl
Good start, but then it gets ruined
Teringer
An Exercise In Nonsense
Kaelan Mccaffrey
Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
Michael Ledo
This is another of a half dozen or so poorly acted poorly scripted La Llorona film about the legend of the demon that causes women to drown their own children. The production couldn't hold my interest 3 minutes into the film. They used typical horror piano music and what was that fakey looking red-eye make-up? Horror fans will be bored to tears.
Gravastorm
Visually appealing, sometimes flat dialog and a disturbing storyline combine for a decently creepy first attempt from this writer/director.After seeing the film then reading the comments here it is evident how little attention watchers paid to the story. The following seem to be the important points that were missed. Young mother Maria is sensitive to the paranormal which generates an early encounter with the cursed spirit La Llorona (who killed her son by drowning because of a man's treachery and is doomed to possess mothers to do the same) and results in her ability to sketch the spirit's victims. Detective Alex Scott is haunted by the loss of his child to the spirit's influence several years ago. Fearing for the life of her young son Maria contacts Alex who learns from a fortune teller that Maria's boy is the reincarnation of the cursed woman's murdered child. She says the only way to defeat the spirit is to "pluck out the evil eye".Chilling and atmospheric I am interested to see what this director may do with a bit more experience.
joemamaohio
Based around the urban legend of La Llorona, "The Cry" deals with mothers who drown their children because a spirit tells them to. Trying to get to the bottom of this phenomena is officer Alex Smith (Christian Camargo), who has his own terrifying secrets. As he delves into the legend, he begins to realize that it's not just a legend, but a reality.La Llorona is said to be a spirit of a woman who, after her lover jilted her, drowned her child in retaliation, then weeps for him, and she wants company so she convinces mothers to drown her children so she has someone to cry with. It's all a pitiful excuse mothers give as to why they drown their children - one of the most despicable acts imaginable. And this movie was just as horrible.
gavin6942
Spanish Harlem is plagued with a rash of disappearances and murders revolving around small children. Nothing seems to connect the crimes except that they seem to take place near bodies of water (although at least one occurs in a bathtub). We enter the story from two angles -- a woman who can see the victims in her visions and two police detectives, one of whom had a troubled childhood."The Cry" (or "La Llorona") was a confusing film for me. I never understood how the main actress was connected to the crimes. I don't know why the fortune teller scene was so long (seemingly to explain the Weeping Woman, but it didn't do this very well). And the flashbacks to the cop's childhood? Or the flashback to the girl by the water? Very hard to follow and ultimately more distracting than anything. The film was 80 minutes, but could easily have been 60 if the opening credits were cut down and the extra material (flashbacks) were excised.Stylistically the film is good. The director really captures some great shots and the use of lenses or filters to give scenes different colors was a nice touch (sometimes blue, other times green or orange). The use of two different kinds of cameras made the editing look a bit sloppy (not unlike "Cabin by the Lake 2"). The overhead shots were also unnecessary.I don't mean to be harsh, because really I could see this was a labor of love and it does have potential if it had simply been edited differently. And I applaud the writer for exploring a traditional part of her culture. In a bonus feature, she says she scoured the earth for five years collecting stories of La Llorona. Unfortunately, she left us with an inconsistent narrative that doesn't really make those stories clear. (Personally, I would recommend a book presenting oral histories of the Llorona tales... it would be more appropriate than the film).I keep bringing up Ryan Harper's "Circulation" again and again in my reviews. I can't stress enough how great that film is. And here it comes again. If you're looking for one film that brings Spanish-American culture to the audience the best, you want "Circulation". "The Cry", while not a bad film, left me more confused than anything and I failed to connect with whatever the message was intended to be.
