The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025)

And here we are, at last, with the last entry in The Conjuring movie series. Yeah. Sure. If you believe that then I have a lovely bridge to sell you. But let’s take things at face value for now.

You should know what to expect by now. People are affected by spooky shenanigans. Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) eventually turn up to help them, and the Warrens have never encountered a ghost that they couldn’t actually label a demon. The movies allow them to be presented as Super-Exorcists. Meanwhile, reality has left viewers more and more equipped to see the Warrens as con artists, at best, and very dangerous and exploitative abusers, at worst. This time around they are assisted by their equally "gifted" daughter, Judy (Mia Tomlinson), and it's the Smurl family who are at the mercy of horrible demons.

I could spend the majority of this review mentioning the screenplay by the three writers (Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, none of them strangers to the extended Conjuring cinematic universe) . I could throw a bit of shade at director Michael Chaves, who has been allowed to helm this after two of the weakest movies in that aforementioned selection of films. I could also point you towards The Haunted, the 1991 TV movie that generally does a better job of showing the real-life case this film is based on. That film has lead roles for Sally Kirkland and Jeffrey DeMunn, has Stephen Markle and Diane Baker portraying the Warrens, and is a more completely satisfying telling of the tale.

I could do all of those things, but it would only allow me to delay myself admitting that this is decidedly okay. I would probably enjoy it a lot more if it didn't seem so determined to get us all to buy into the "cult of the Warrens", but there are some individual scares that are effective and fun. There's also a lot of stuff that will have you rolling your eyes, and I thought it was bordering on parody to have Ed Warren uttering multiple warnings to people about their special relic room chock full of allegedly haunted and cursed objects.

Wilson and Farmiga can do this in their sleep by now, but they never feel as if they're sleepwalking through the whole thing. The dialogue is bad, and there isn't a scene that isn't overstuffed with ridiculously melodramatic lines about demons and souls and love, but both Wilson and Farmiga play it all as admirably straight as they have done throughout the other movies in this series. Tomlinson also does well, and Ben Hardy works nicely alongside her (he's a young man brave enough to consider marrying into the Warren family). As for the Smurl family members, the cast all do well enough, but are overshadowed by the shadows and spectres whirling around them for most of the runtime.

I didn't like this. I wouldn't recommend it to horror fans. It's hard to deny that it works how it is intended though. It's a mainstream chiller punctuated by some jumps and spooky moments, and many will consider it a perfect viewing choice when looking for something to watch and be thrilled by on a dark night in front of the TV. I just wasn't impressed. Maybe the next movie in this series will work for me. Oh, of course, I almost forgot that this was the last one. Hmmmmm. We'll see. Don't be surprised if we hear news in the next few years that we're getting something titled "The Conjuring In Connecticut".

4/10

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