The La Llorona herself is not the main character, nor is she the villain like in the 2019 release. Shudder’s La Llorona puts a new spin on the old story, but the weeping woman legend is not the central plot in which we follow. The ghostly apparition of the once beautiful woman is then forced to walk the earth for all time, mourning the death of her offspring. It is the story that many of us are familiar with-of a woman who, after she is scorned by her lover, drowns her children in a fit of hysterical rage, and then drowns herself following the subsequent grief. The original tale from which La Llorona (the Shudder movie) borrows its source material is taken from the popular Latino folk tale that is also called La Llorona, or the Weeping Woman. In Llorona, we follow a well to-do family in Guatemala, and the strange events that follow the arrival of a new, mysterious housekeeper. Not to be confused with 2019’s The Curse of La Llorona, horror streaming service Shudder’s La Llorona is a haunting tale of outrage, grief, the testing of familial ties and an exceptional example of the way films can approach horrible people without a fervent desire to paint them as good.
