Produced by James Wan, who is slowly building a small horror empire with his The Conjuring and spin-off Annabelle series, The Curse of La Llorona is sure to pack plenty of solid scares. This new entry in the Wan horror-verse takes a stab at one of the scariest tales from Mexican folklore and thrusts it into 1970s Los Angeles. La Llorona, or the Weeping Woman, is the tale of a woman who, after finding her husband with a new wife, drowns her children in a river, but instantly regrets her actions, and kills herself as well. Now she roams the afterlife looking for lost children to claim as her own. If you hear her crying, well, then, it’s already too late. Sometimes she is a vengeful spirit, sometimes she is a warning of misfortune: as all folklore goes, it is up for interpretation. Here are five of my favorite novels that feature folklore and mythologies, often giving them a new twist, but central to each story are entities, legends, and myths that have lasted the test of time.
This post was originally published on GetLiterary.com.