Catangro
After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.
Rosie Searle
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Johan Louwet
Now this was rather a disappointment. It eventually starts of greatly with a scene of the legendary dark eyed crying woman helped by some bloodthirsty dogs and an ugly cripple man attacking and killing the passengers of a chariot in the dark woods. Who thinks (like me) was going to get a mystery of who is that crying woman will be disappointed as within minutes you will already know who it is. Later on we get a mature lady named Selma living in a big mansion letting her niece Amelia and her husband Jaime come over. They haven't seen each other in 15 years. Very fast Selma lets her niece know what she expects from her. They are both descendants of a witch which was killed decades ago and now should be brought back to life by Amelia at midnight to avenge her death. Amelia doesn't want to but Selma starts to play all kind of tricks on her and even more on her husband. None of them were really as good as "The Witch's Mirror" and rather stupid in my opinion. Yeah there was even some Frankenstein like monster. Sequences and some fights it all continued way too long and took away the tension and creepiness of the whole. Thin plot, one dimensional characters and very disappointing end. This director clearly tried to go for a more spectacular and action packed movie rather than more subtle, mysterious and atmospheric horror which was more common those days (or at least that's what I think).
GL84
After she arrives at her family's estate in the countryside, a woman begins to suspect something sinister about her newly-arrived cousin who seems to fit the local of a murderous, wailing woman all too well and tries to stop her nefarious plans.This was a really enjoyable and entertaining effort that gets a lot right. One of the biggest pluses here is the extraordinary Gothic atmosphere at play, where the majority of the film takes place on a multilevel hacienda full of secret passage-ways, cobweb-infested tunnels, staircases into the other levels and so much more here that there's plenty of creepiness to get hooked on before adding in the dungeons full of rotting corpses with mashed-up faces, stringy hair and a loss of general bodily form that look effectively decayed and rotting away with sickly skin and just a look of complete and utter mess, effectively making for a great look here overall when placed into the setting of the house. As well, the look of the swamp where the creature appears is absolutely chilling and really sets off the opening ambush well with it's fog-laden surroundings, feeling of unease and general design that seems to make escape impossible. When combined with a large amount of action, from an opening ambush in the swamp, the journey through the hidden mirror in the bedroom and the encounter with the reanimated servant all conspire to give this a spectacular feel where it doesn't really slow down the pace at all. The fact that this still features a ton of jump scares is impressive, with images disappearing in front of a mirror and the unaffected still interacting with with real-time person who's not giving a reflection, hands emerging behind unsuspecting victims and even the work in the finale, where three separate brawls break out around the crumbling villa and a mad dash erupts to get out alive. While all this stuff works well, the fact that the rubber snakes in here look quite lame and really unconvincing, part of the whole special effects work that just looks really cheesy and fake and definitely looks really bad at times but not enough to detract from the more important matters.Today's Rating/PG-13: Violence.
rkolesza
I just watched CasaNegra Entertainment's version of this film on DVD, fully restored and all I can is Wow, they did a great job with it. It's such a treat to see these old Mexican classic finally get the attention they deserve. Curse of the Crying Woman is often considered the the Mexican Black Sunday and it lives up to it in every way. Beautifully filmed entirely at night, creepy mist, candle lit dungeons and dead trees are everywhere. These type visual elements were one of the trademarks in many of great horror films from Meixco and definitely what helps make them unique.The story involves a young woman who upon visiting her Aunt who lives in a creepy Hacienda mansion in the countryside, learns she is next in line to join a family of evil witches. The Mexican title suggests the film is based on the legend of Llorona which it is only loosely. Baledon takes the real legend and morphs it into his own screen play and the outcome is pure classic horror enjoyment. A must for any true lover of Gothic, Black and White horror movies.
jim riecken (youroldpaljim)
This Mexican made horror flick is said to be based on an old Mexican legend called "The Crying Woman." However, this film has little to do with the legend and is essentially an original story about a women who comes to a haunted mansion to claim an inheritance and is plagued by the ghost of a dead woman and a rotting corpse that comes to life. Some descriptions claim the woman is a descendant of the original crying woman, but I saw no mention of this in video copy I saw. Perhaps this was removed when the film was prepared for English language release by K. Gorden Murray. I understand that there is a more faithful version of the original legend filmed in Mexico in 1930's.
