The Conjuring: Last Rites is a film that feels anxious. Anxious about sending off its characters, anxious about cutting things too short, and anxious about taking any risks. Ultimately, it is what it needs to be. It’s a back-to-basics entry in the series, designed from head to toe to give the Warrens the kind of peculiarly pleasant poltergeist filled sendoff you’d expect. Conjuring fans will be pleased with how it evokes the first two films and how much love it shows its main characters. But for those with little emotional attachment to the franchise and those who find little appeal in callbacks, the back-to-basics approach won’t do much.
The Conjuring Is A Billion Dollar Beast That Must Be Fed
Maybe it’s a righteous anxiety. If the Nightmare on Elm Street series was what made New Line Cinema “The House That Freddy Built”, then it’s safe to say the Conjuring franchise made New Line Cinema “The House That James Wan Kept In Order”. As of this year, The Conjuring’s cinematic universe is a multi-billion-dollar property and the most financially reliable one in all of horror history (at the very least the highest grossing). It demands repeating what you’ve done before, because that is what has made New Line and Atomic Monster money hand over fist for more than a decade now.
But what makes money and what makes a film great have never really been the same, have they?
This leads to a story and plot devices and performances you’ve seen before: a demon does bad things to a family of good people, this time in suburban Pennsylvania, as the film attempts to depict the Smurl haunting of 1986. Ed and Lorraine Warren show up to help them, once again played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. They are terrorized by haunted children’s toys, monsters lurking in mirrors and shadows, and it all culminates in a big exorcism. The primary difference this time around is that the Warrens themselves are victims as well, as their daughter, Judy (Mia Tomlinson), is being targeted by a malicious entity simultaneously, one that has had her on its list since the day she was born.
The (Fictional) Warrens Final Ride Tugs At The Heartstrings
Despite any grievances one might have with the real-life Warrens, I have always been of the opinion that the fictional Warrens were the least interesting part of the series. An insistence on putting Ed and Lorraine front and center in the second and third films seemed to overlook that the majority of the charm of the first film was in the time we spent with the Perron family. Their slow burn suffering through the Infestation and Oppression steps of the Warren’s iconic three-stage demon map, their struggle against the unknown, that was what made the first film iconic and atmospheric. Some of that is recreated here with the Smurls and their realistic family conflict in the face of the supernatural. But make no mistake, this film belongs to the Warrens.
And this entry, surprising as it may be, made me actually enjoy watching the Warrens and seeing their relationship with their now grown daughter Judy play out. Tomlinson delivers on her role, bringing life to a character who was effectively a latchkey kid, coming home every day to an arsenal of the most wildly evil artifacts on earth. Here, she has developed psychic abilities similar to her mother, leading to a struggle to suppress them and live a normal life. Her relationship with her parents is believable, and she plays especially well opposite Farmiga.
Heartwarming Climax with a Sentimental Edge
Our fourth expedition with the Warrens is undeniably schmaltzy in highlighting this, but that sentimentality it smacks you with intertwines with the plot nicely. It even takes the usual bombastic climax you’ve come to anticipate from modern exorcism films and actually tries to say something instead of just knocking you in the head repeatedly with eerie visuals and loud noises. The big confrontation, which evolves from the walls of a house exploding and people being thrown around by infernal telekinesis, ultimately becomes something heartwarming and on theme.
The Conjuring: Last Rites Is A House Tonally Divided
Now despite the sweetness in that regard, the film cannot be saved from its more glaring flaws by the power of family. Last Rites comes in at a slightly bloated 2 hours and 15 minutes runtime due to the cutting back and forth between its a-plot and its b-plot. The fact the actual Smurl haunting feels like a B-plot at all until the final third of the film is a symptom of a much bigger disconnect in the script.
Last Rites is a scare-a-minute fare on one side, chock full of jump scares and some actually very effective set pieces surrounding its paranormal antagonists (see: one of the Smurl daughters scouring a tape to catch a glimpse of the entity attacking her family, and the surprising death of a series regular). But its other half is too whimsical to bridge the gap. It’s hard to get in and out of the mood to be scared by malevolent spirits when you have things like a table tennis montage between Ed and Judy’s new boyfriend set to Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” jerking you back into lightheartedness.
What results is a film that, while entertaining as the closer to the series in abstract, ultimately fails to reach the practical levels of dread the original or its sequel did. The Conjuring still manages to give me consistent chills with its scares all these years later, but Last Rites only manages to land hits a little more than half the time. It is a house tonally divided, and it’s a miracle that it doesn’t totally collapse by the end despite that division.
Michael Chaves Directing Course Corrects For The Finale
Returning director Michael Chaves, who helmed The Devil Made Me Do It and The Nun II, at the very least revitalizes things from the aesthetic downgrade we got in the last film. He doesn’t bring the heat he was bringing in The Nun II, but he does recover from the misstep that was the third movies’ cartoonish presentation.
The movement of the camera and the visuals provided here are the course correction the series really needed for its final run. It feels reductive to say he’s a good understudy for James Wan, given he’s directed more Conjuring films than Wan has at this point, but it’s hard not to make the comparison when so much of this film calls back to that original that started it all.
The Conjuring: Last Rites closes the book on a very large chapter of horror history, along with serving a side of the warm and fuzzies for those particularly invested in the characters Wilson and Farmiga made famous. But it’s far from the best the franchise has to offer, suffering from tonal whiplash and an inconsistent ability to generate scares. While I’m glad for the horror fans that will enjoy it, I have a nagging feeling that “The Case That Ended It All” won’t stand the test of time the way its predecessors have.
