HOLY DAMN! This is the freakiest thing I've seen since Darby O'Gill and the Little People. Freakier even than What Lies Beneath - and that freaked me out so much that I made my brother pull back the shower curtain before I would get into take my shower the next morning. I was a week away from turning 21.

The premise is based on the Mexican legend of the ghost woman who abducts children in a misguided reaction to the drowning deaths of her own children long ago. As the film opens, we see "La Llorona" abduct the brother of Kika. Enter: Leo San Juan and what appears to be some kind of supernatural, Hispanic Mystery, Inc., summoned to investigate the abductions and find the missing children.

I had heard about "La Llorona" many years ago, but only vaguely. Then last year, she resurfaced as "The Weeping Woman" in the Batwoman comic book, which curiously enough began publication just weeks before this film opened in Mexico. Watching her origin story depicted here in animation was particularly unsettling, and I have to give credit here to both the animators who captured Yoltzin's facial expressions as well as to the truly haunting vocal work. I don't know if the wails were recorded by Rocia Lara (credited as the voice of La Llorona on IMDb) or someone else (IMDb's cast credits are woefully incomplete, and Wikipedia is no help either), but whoever's voice it is made the character absolutely chilling.

I almost began to have the presence of mind to wonder where Kika's mother and any other adults were, and why if the town was so frightened by La Llorona anyone would even allow children to go trick-or-treating by themselves, but before I ever even got that far, I'm watching Don Andres fight off a bizarre version of the Batman villains Scarface & The Ventriloquist AND THEN A HOUSE CAME ALIVE AND STARTED CHASING HIM.

Didn't see that coming.

In fact, I have to admit, I didn't really anticipate much at all after the first 10 minutes because I was so caught up in the sheer creepiness and WTF? factor of this one that I wasn't even sure how it might play out. I mean, when you start with a ghost woman kidnapping children because hers drowned, it's not like there's a particularly low ceiling for morbidity. For all I knew, any and all characters were on the chopping block.

The finale of the film, at the sunken chapel, was quite creepy. Flash animation has its limitations, but this film managed to prove to me that those don't have to interfere with proper storytelling. Then, there's something about swimming to the bottom of an abandoned, half-sunken church to reach the crypts of drowned children that's sufficiently creepy on its own.

There is quite a lot of levity throughout the film, particularly from the dragon/lizard/whatever, Alebrije as well as from Kika. Some of it almost feels inappropriate, as though it's not proper to chuckle in the middle of something so morose as what's taking place, and much of the humor is a bit stilted. Still, it was nice that the storytellers were mindful that the plot was creepy enough on its own and that the film would benefit from an additional element.

I cottoned on early that this was part of a series, and I have to say that I'm eager now to see more from it. This film appealed strongly to the boy in me who loves Scooby-Doo, but also managed to genuinely captivate my attention in the present as an adult.

Incidentally, the subtitles were atrocious. I was reminded of that scene in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country where the Enterprise crew tries to speak Klingon, working on-the-fly to manually translate from books. I have a friend who translates professionally, and I don't know if she would find this hysterical or infuriating.