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HOME/Archive/Hubbs/Books/Obits/Shorts/Links/Contact The Cry (2007) by Diana Thoren
La Llorona is a woman in Hispanic folklore that drowned her children to punish her husband for betraying her in some way. When she realized what she had done, she was doomed to walk the river forever, searching for her missing children. That’s how the legend goes. “The Cry” takes place in modern day New York and centers on a pair of cops investigating a series of cases where women are drowning their own children. The subtitle to “The Cry” is “La Llorona – the Urban Legend that Kills.” This film is so boring that I began calling it “La Boring-a – the Urban Legend that Bores.” In fact, it’s so unscary and unsuspenseful that it makes me question director Bernadine Santistevan’s actual intention in making it, which seems to conflict with her PR department’s plan to market it as an intense horror film. “The Cry” could easily fit into a weekend of “edgy” programming on the Lifetime channel. One of my huge pet peeves is when directors insist on using flashy camera tricks to force tension and cheap scares. Call me old-fashioned (or just plain old), but I prefer substance. Santistevan has packed “The Cry” with every trendy camera trick she’s seen on her favorite cell phone commercials, including but not limited to grainy filters, intentionally choppy edits, extreme fast-forward/quick cut to extreme slo-mo, and color tints. Done with probably a quarter of the budget that the cell phone companies have, it comes off as naïve and pathetic and will only serve to date the movie quickly and horribly. One early scene of a woman drowning her baby still manages to be disturbing even mucked up with a ton of trendy editing tricks, and would have been so much more powerful and moving without them. A later even more disturbing scene would have been truly jarring if it wasn’t buried under so much blue grain effect that you can hardly tell what’s going on. There are flashes of real potential here, and I think Santistevan could prove to be a decent director. She just needs to climb down off AT&T’s shoulders and do it on her own terms. I will say this much: the soundtrack is fantastic. If they’re selling, I’m buying. There’s some Spanish pop music, some guys that sound reminiscent of the Gipsy Kings, and some stuff that sounds like Lhasa and made me wish it were Lhasa. In fact, whoever remakes this movie better and scarier, I hope they load up the soundtrack with Lhasa. I love her. And her album is conveniently called “La Llorona!” But I digress. Extras include a history of the La Llorona legend, presented boringly, and a statement from the director detailing how she came to make this film. And I think it reveals the main problem with it; I think she’s too close to the subject matter. The La Llorona tale is apparently a boogey(wo)man wielded against Hispanic and Latin American children to get them to behave and not play outside after dark. Because of this, Santistevan states that she has been terrified of La Llorona for as long as she can remember. I was not raised in a Hispanic or Latin American household, so I need a little more convincing than, “Okay, La Llorona is a terrifying legend. And, ACTION.” Women mooning over a flowing river with red smeared on their eyes do not frighten me. Handled by a different director, “The Cry” could have been “The Ring.” Here it comes off more like a less-scary “Dark Water.” If “Dark Water” is your kind of film, then “The Cry” will be right up your weepy chick-flick alley. Read more of Diana's movie reviews
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