Spirit Hunter: La Llorona (2004 Video) User Reviews

Embarrassing

[Billy_Crash · 1/10 · 10 April 2011]

If I could give a negative number as a vote instead of "one," I would definitely do it.

"Haunted from Within" has problems on all fronts: The story is extremely weak. Detective Lupino actually tells the doctor that he'll be back in a minute. There is a slight fade out as Lupino exits, then a fade in as he returns - and that need for the character to leave is never addressed and serves absolutely no purpose. Furthermore, the movie is loaded with "talking heads" and too many people on phones, which is absolutely ridiculous. The directing is god awful, the acting is atrocious, the editing is third rate, the music is abysmal, the cinematography is shameful and the lighting is horrendous.

I have only seen one low budget movie worse than this ("Gone the Way of Flesh"). Writer/Director/Producer Cruz should be embarrassed.

I wouldn't even use the DVD as a coaster for drinks.

Worst thing I've ever seen.

[Five-Dollar-Bin-Fanatic · 1/10 · 19 April 2011]

So, I bought this as a piggy back to another terrible movie, The Haunting at Marston Manor. Upon seeing that, I was glad to see that there was a movie that could possibly be better than that. Boy, was I disappointed. I make movies with a friend, and they're not the best. We're amateurs and we know it. We know that they could be a lot better. But at least ours have SUBSTANCE. It was so bad, that about four times during the course my family had agreed to turn it off, but decided to give it more time to redeem itself. It did not. The graphics and "animation" (if you can even call it that.) literally made me laugh so hard I almost wet myself (especially the news program. A photo from the frigging' scene in the movie? What, you couldn't even take the time to take another picture of him? No, I guess they just couldn't spare to spend anymore of their $200 budget, huh?)

Just, unless you want your IQ to be lowered fifty points, avoid this movie at all costs. It's not worth it!

Completely lifeless!

[manchester_england2004 · 1/10 · 4 March 2010]

HAUNTED FROM WITHIN is an incredibly poor "straight-to-DVD" movie about the urban legend of La Llorona. As I shall demonstrate, the producers of this travesty are merely using this interesting urban legend to con viewers into buying the DVD.

First, I'll say that the other reviewer should not be taken seriously. If he seriously thinks this movie is better than ROSEMARY'S BABY then his experience of horror movies must be even more limited than his use of vocabulary. Even the most ardent critics of ROSEMARY'S BABY can identify at least one positive element. The same cannot be said about HAUNTED FROM WITHIN.

Aside from the fact that a woman commits suicide after drowning her children and then comes back as a ghost, the movie bears no relation to the legend of La Llorona. The movie plays out as a series of loosely connected scenes with many revolving around an investigator with psychic abilities.

I can say without hesitation that this is one of the most dysfunctional movies I have ever seen. There is no direction for the story at all, absolutely no narrative whatsoever. This is far worse than anything churned out by Ulli Lommel or Uwe Boll. The former of these directors is notorious for producing movies with long drawn-out murder scenes that are repeated over and over again in an almost identical fashion to the first. But even he can manage to come up with something resembling a beginning and something resembling an end even when the middle is dysfunctional.

The direction is as poor as can be with a complete lack of suspense, scares or tension. Even the drama elements are hopelessly handled and represent something more boring than even the worst soap opera you may have had the misfortune of enduring. And no, there are no laughs to be found here. Even the MST3K guys couldn't make this funny!

The acting across the board is absolutely abysmal with no one actor involved managing to show even the slightest potential of a successful acting career.

Many of the individual scenes are incredibly long, with long pauses between dialogue exchanges. I'm not exaggerating!

HAUNTED FROM WITHIN is not even one of the "so-bad-it's-good" movies like CAMP BLOOD or THE NAIL GUN MASSACRE. If you want to laugh hysterically, watch those movies. If you want to see a proper horror movie about ghosts watch THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, THE CHANGELING, RINGU, THE EYE (original Korean version), THE GRUDGE, ONE MISSED CALL or PHONE. All of these movies are a million times better than the travesty known as HAUNTED FROM WITHIN.

I advise anyone who has had the good fortune of avoiding seeing HAUNTED FROM WITHIN to keep up the good work! Just forget this movie exists. Don't spare a thought for it!

A painfully tedious talkfest

[Woodyanders · 2/10 · 4 January 2012]

A beautiful woman drowns her two children and then commits suicide. Her curse spreads throughout a small Arizona town by possessing young mothers. It's up to intrepid psychic investigator Dr. David Stern (a hopelessly bland and underwhelming portrayal by David Patrick Stern) and helpful psychic reader Carmelita (stiffly played by the pretty, but blah Maria Esquivel) to stop said curse before it's too late. Sound good? Well, it just ain't. Writer/director Jose L. Cruz relates the dull, meandering, and uneventful narrative at an excruciatingly sluggish pace, generates absolutely zero tension or spooky atmosphere, and goes way overboard on a numbing and energy-sapping surplus of terrible drippy dialogue. The cruddy (far from) special effects, a limp conclusion, a bathtub-set murder set piece that's too poorly staged to have any real impact, and the across the board wooden acting from a lame no-name cast add further abject insult to already appalling injury. Worst of all, this clunker takes the fairly novel and interesting urban legend of La Llorona and does simply nothing remotely scary or inspired with it. Instead this flick just lies flat-out dead on your TV screen for what seems like the longest, most boring, and dissatisfying 87 minutes in one of the inner circles of bad cinema hell. A real clunker.

SHE'LL KILL AGAIN

[nogodnomasters · 1/10 · 5 May 2019]

The movie tells of the legend of La Llorana, a woman who drowned her children to be with her lover. He rejected her for what she did, then she committed suicide and wanders the earth, or wherever there are Mexicans, drowning children. Dr. David Stern (David Patrick Green) is an investigator and first person narrator for this tale. As a child his family was killed in an accident and only he survived. He has psychic abilities and can solve crimes. His goal now is to prevent crimes. He is fascinated by women who murder their children. He is convinced this can only be caused by possession and is proof of a higher power. Olivia's (Tamra Marez) children were drowned in her tub. She confesses to the deed, but can't remember doing it. It isn't long before these 2 subplots come together.

The plot was horribly written. Dialogue was tedious with many pauses. Acting was non-existing. Occasion subtitles. Kurt Sinclair in his underwear.

Rare F-Bomb, no sex, no nudity

I can't stop watching it

[aujicj · 5/10 · 2 August 2006]

Like most horror movie covers, it drew me in i was like ooh this looks good. Its an okay story that if in the hands of a modern director would have been good. It won't make you spill popcorn all over the floor, but it won't put you to sleep either. towards the end it gets really good, but the middle will make you a little impatient. It was better than Dream Home and Rosemary's Baby. It didn't quite spook me like The Blair Witch Project. Judge for yourself because I am one of those people who prefer a good can't get it off my mind scare that makes me turn all the lights on in the house. That and I just don't take to well to the oldie Scary movies and other related scare tactics. I'm not saying don't watch it. I'm saying judge for yourself.

Disgrace to humanity

[vossdoug · 1/10 · 17 November 2021]

I really wish there was a rating lower than a 1 on this site. I have seen many terrible films in my lifetime of watching horror movie, and none of them can even compare to this monstrosity. This is only my second review on IMDb, and I really only write reviews if there aren't any for a film, but this one was so god-awful that I had to. I'm not even sure how it's possible for a movie to be this bad, because it clearly wasn't the director's intention. Every single aspect of it is as bad as it could possibly be: terrible acting, horrible dialogue, horrendous cinematography, atrocious editing, awful plot, appalling lighting, abominable audio, and laughable special effects. Apparently the budget is an estimated $10,000. I estimate that Cruz decided to keep $9,900 for himself. Also, it took 10 YEARS to edit. How is that even possible? Was writer/director/producer/editor/actor Cruz trying to win an award for the worst thing ever made? Whatever you do, just don't watch this movie, even if this review interests you. It's not even so bad it's good bad, or laughably bad, or fun to watch bad, or needed to watch to see how bad a movie can be bad, it's just really, really, really bad.

Strange, confusing haunting story...

[dwpollar · 3/10 · 4 July 2021]

1st watched 7/2/2021 - 3 out of 10(Dir-Jose L. Cruz): Strange, confusing haunting story about a modern possession from the ghost "La Llorona" causing havoc and murder in a small Arizona town. This legendary Mexican ghost is based on a woman who drowned her children to try and get a man to marry her, but it back-fired and she roams the land entering and possessing young women to do the same. We are initially presented a story where a young boy survives a car crash, and than becomes psychic(this becomes the character played by David Green, whom when he grows up he tries to solve the murders in the town - I didn't realize this until writing the review). He is a teacher of Psychology with ESP who loses his job and does what I have mentioned above. They than show a young woman feeling strange, waking up, and finding her kids drowned in the bathtub. We than start following another woman, who is the wife of a political candidate - with her supposedly being possessed as well by the same ghost. The movie jumps back and forth to so many different people it was hard to make the connections, at first. In a lot of ways this is a detective story where the police and the Psychologist are trying to find out what is going on(but, of course, are never on the same page). The acting is very bad, and the editing is atrocious. The director redeems himself a little bit near the end, with some unique camerawork and special effects when the Psychologist tries to enter La Llorona's mind (believe it or not). All in all, this was a very badly put-together story with bad acting and a little scariness - but not enough to hold horror fans or anyone to want to watch the movie. I'm sure Mr. Jose L. Cruz (who created most of it) is proud it got released, but that is not necessarily a good thing for it's viewers.