The Cry (2007)

Best movie ever!

As Good As It Gets

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

wow, was this film awful....$1 rental at redbox wasted.the only reason i watched the whole thing is because i'm paralyzed and when in bed i couldn't shut it off myself, lol.every scene was long and drawn out with boring camera scenes.the flashbacks were long and boring and very predictable.nothing was interesting or scary.you could cut out 45 minutes of this film and not lose anything to the story.the cast was awful, and i wanted the spirit to kill everyone just so movie would end.i'd watch my mother the car reruns before this film, hehe.the only thing the writer should feel proud of is she found a sucker to finance it.Stink-A-Roo don't waste your time.

I was really excited about this modern take because Mexcian folk tales and especially la llorona stories are a passion of mine. I had heard it was bad and I was willing to deal with bad effects/bad acting etc for a sake of enjoying a new twist on my favorite scary story. however. i was so unbelievably disappointed in this film that i almost couldn't watch it, but i did, praying it would get better. Its not scary. Its terrible acting despite the main actor (who is a terrific actor as seen on Dexter) so I know it is simply the screenplay and not the actors themselves (with the notable exception of the main detective's awkward and laughable-in- a-bad-way partner who was just horrendous. all the women didn't do bad at all but maybe that is because all together there may have been about five lines of dialogue written for all the females in this film combined. the worst part of the movie by far was the story. with such amazing folklore to work with i don't understand how it was even possible to make this movie as terrible as it was. i can scare my nephews with this story by telling it to them in the middle of the day in the car. i don't get how with such a large budget (you can tell by the caliber of cinematography) they could have made this story so frustratingly boring. i agree with the last review: none of this story makes sense and is ever explained. it trails along and leaves off like a seven year old making it up at a camp fire and then ending it abruptly when she realizes everyone has stopped listening. I also think that the way the scene was shot with the white mami was indeed in horribly bad taste. Come on Biny, lets see you choose better projects in the future.

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.

In New York, detective Alex Scott (Christian Camargo) is investigating with his partner Sergio Perez (Carlos Leon) the disappearance of several children. When they visit the Mexican witch Gloria (Miriam Colon), the woman advises that a powerful evil force is chasing the reincarnation of her son and drowning the other children to bring pain to their mothers."The Cry" is a boring, pointless and unpleasant mess about a Mexican legend called "La Llorona". This is the first time that I see a reference to this legend, and maybe this movie might make some sense to those that are familiar with "La Llorona". However, the screenplay is terrible, without development of characters or situations, and there is an absolute lack of explanation about everything that happens in the story. Why the evil spirit is attacking children in New York? Why the former Wall Street broker Scott has become a New York detective after losing his son? Why Maria was able to protect her son and why she blinded herself in the end? The lead character Scott is absolutely boring; maybe the actor has felt the turkey he was hired to work. Last but not the least, the theme of mothers drowning babies and children is of an extremely bad taste even for a pseudo-horror movie. My vote is one.Title (Brazil): "Gritos da Morte" ("Cries of the Death")