Hide your kids - the Weeping Woman is on the way.
A terrifying entity, also known as La Llorona, has been used by parents to scare their offspring straight for generations.
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The story is based on Mexican folklore about the ghost of a grieving mother who has a fondness for drowning youngsters in the night.
Now, she's used her creepy, long fingers to claw her way onto the silver screen, in a jump-scare-riddled rollercoaster called The Curse of The Weeping Woman that had me checking under my bed for nights to come - and I wasn't the only one.
According to Raymond Cruz, who plays a modern day shaman in the film, La Llorona is not just a legend in Latin culture.
"She's very real to us, it's not a ghost story," he told me, much to my dismay.
I'd hoped to live out the rest of my days in blissful ignorance, quietly whispering "it's not real" when necessary, just like I did in the cinema.
Raymond wasn't having it. "It's not a fantasy," he assured me.
The filmmakers even opted to have a real shaman cleanse the set before filming began, but that didn't stop this nasty piece of work from making her presence known.
"The house may or may not have been haunted," director Michael Chaves said.
"Seriously, I was a total skeptic going into it, but we had so many odd occurrences."
"A cold blast of air went through the house," Raymond agreed, despite my pleas.
"Not just through the house, but it went through your body. It was like stepping out in zero degree weather, in the middle of summer in Los Angeles."
Hey, who needs to sleep anyway, right?
For the movie stars that had grown up with the tale of La Llorona, it seemed that with great horror came great responsibility.
Actor Patricia Patricia Velásquez, for whom the Weeping Woman was a childhood mainstay, said she felt she had been "chosen" to help bring the legend to life.
"I felt that we needed to make sure she was respected," she said.
"It's probably the reason why we had all these weird things happen on set, in our homes, or in the hotel, because I feel like La Llorona was there, and she's now here."
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN? WHERE?!" I was unable to stop myself from blurting out.
"She has to make sure her story is being told right, it's her life story!" Patricia clarified.
Oh, well in that case, not a worry! Said no one, ever.
The Curse of the Weeping Woman is rated M in New Zealand, which means you can actually take the kids along to scare some sense into them, if you dare.
All I'll say is, if they've been acting up at bath time - this could be just the ticket.
Newshub.
