Everyone’s favourite extended universe is back! But enough about Avengers: Endgame, here’s the new instalment in the Conjuring franchise.

They’ll let anyone get married these days.

Producer James Wan has spent the last 6 years making monsters out of nuns, dolls and now Mexicans, in a series of films where the same things happen to slightly different families. This time it’s Linda Cardellini (who appeared briefly in Endgame) who gets the wan treatment, playing a social worker who inadvertently unleashes a curse of unpronounceable evil.

The Curse of La Llorona (you can remember it as rhyming with The Curse of My Sharona, which dooms its victims to one-hit wonder status) continues the series’ hallmark jump scares, pseudo-religion and schlocky racism, as Cardellini tries to exorcise her home using everything from “smudging”/sploofing to rubbing eggs on her door frames. Who wrote this, Gwyneth Paltrow?

Every single scene has the Weeping Woman jump out and then disappear, leaving marks on her victims and drowsiness in the audience. Why does nothing happen in horror movies anymore? It’s not a story so much as an exorcise in James Wan bingo, whether it’s the predictable exposition in a church or the tedious comic relief exorcist (Raymond Cruz AKA Tuco from Breaking Bad).

It’s fine for a franchise to recycle some of the same elements, but if you’re going to build a horror universe at least make it scarier than our actual one.