The cinematic adventures of Ed and Lorraine Warren come to a close with The Conjuring: Last Rites, but unfortunately they don’t go out with their most exciting case. It’s a shame too, because the film gets off to a promising start before losing steam it never really regains.
Set in 1986, this installment’s real-life inspiration comes from the Smurl family, who claimed to have some rather horrific hauntings continually plague their Pennsylvania home. In Last Rites, the trouble begins when eldest daughter Heather (Kíla Lord Cassidy) is gifted an old mirror by her grandparents. Almost immediately, ceilings are collapsing, various family members are seeing disturbing visions, and at one point someone’s even coughing up blood. And yeah, they do try to get rid of the mirror, but it turns out that’s easier said than done.
Though James Wan has stayed involved in the series after directing the first two installments – he once more has a story credit here – director Michael Chaves has mostly been guiding the ship for the entire larger Conjuring Universe franchise for the last few years, helming The Curse of La Llorona, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and The Nun II in quick succession prior to Last Rites. Chaves’ early stabs at Conjuring films struggled to retain the freaky-fun vibe Wan brought to the proceedings, but he has notably improved when it comes to building tension.
There’s some solid horror set pieces in Last Rites, particularly early on, such as when the Smurl family mom, Janet (Rebecca Calder), is doing mundane house tasks while unsettling things keep happening around her. A scene in the family basement involving a presence in the dark is particularly effective and leans on Chaves’ creative visuals, including a skillful use of shadows. There are multiple different presences in this house and Chaves exorcises some good scares out of each, most notably from a particularly intense axe-wielding spirit.
So where are the Warrens during all of this? Well, they’re kind of just hanging out back home for a surprisingly, and soon frustratingly, long portion of the movie. A prologue lets us know there is some history between the Warrens and the mirror, but after that, there is well over an hour where they are just completely unaware of the Smurls and their plight. The film begins with the Warrens having stepped back from taking cases thanks to Ed’s continuing heart problems, but there isn’t even any time spent with them hearing about the Smurls from afar and debating getting involved; it just never comes up until it finally does.
The Warrens do have a storyline of their own, mainly focused on daughter Judy (played by Mia Tomlinson this time), who’s inherited her mother’s ability to commune with the supernatural and is now finding that ability to be increasingly overwhelming. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga continue to be charming and effortlessly engaging as Ed and Lorraine, and both Tomlinson and Ben Hardy (as Judy’s sweet boyfriend, Tony) are very good. A couple of moments involving the upsetting things Judy is seeing are effective, such as a scene in a fitting room that makes good use of all the mirrors surrounding her (this movie is big on mirrors). But besides that, as pleasant as it is spending time with this weird family and their basement of evil objects, we also want to see them actually go on a case too, as opposed to Ed playing ping pong with Tony to the tune of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” (yes, that really happens). Instead, for too much of the run time, Last Rites feels like we’re watching two different movies playing out, because it takes so long to bring the Smurls and the Warrens together.
By the time Chaves does unite them, the initial energy has dissipated, and the movie begins to drag. There are still some well-done flourishes to be found – Last Rites has one of the best among the Conjuring series’ requisite Annabelle appearances – but not enough to be truly satisfying overall. And the way the film is structured leaves it feeling like its focus is all over the place, because when the characters do come together, the Warrens then fully take center stage in a way that makes many of the scenes of the Smurls on their own seem like wasted set-up. Heather in particular goes from feeling like one of the film’s leads in the early scenes to basically an insignificant peripheral player in the third act.
The Conjuring is both a huge Hollywood success story and also a very weird situation, if you take a step back and look at how it came to be. It’s all based on true events, in that people really did claim these things happened and the Warrens then backed and amplified those claims. But then you have to decide for yourself if you believe the Warrens actually encountered countless genuine supernatural threats and then, as depicted in the films in a very amped-up manner (often changing or exaggerating the already-debated reports), saw these things impact the physical world. And that’s all before even getting into Judith Penney’s disturbing allegations about the couple.
Whatever the truth is, and whatever you think of the real Warrens, the cinematic versions of Ed and Lorraine depicted in these films have remained compelling, even as it’s probably best to treat them just as movie characters that exist quite separately from whatever actually occurred. There’s something about Wilson and Farmiga together and how they portray not only Ed and Lorraine’s conviction to their cause but also their ongoing, megawatt adoration for each other that makes for a great movie duo. They’re simultaneously dorky and endearing in a way that feels unique, and the two of them have a great, offbeat chemistry that’s made it fun to watch them venture into each of these spooky stories. All of that remains true in this newest film, which makes it a bummer that Last Rites doesn’t give them a better send-off.
The movie’s opening onscreen text, like the trailers for the film, really pushes how we’re about to see the Warrens’ final case and that something so monumental occurred, we’d understand why it was their last. But then what happens doesn’t live up to that hype, particularly since it brings Ed and Lorraine into the actual case so late in the game. By that point, it’s hard to truly feel them having a personal connection to what’s occurring, no matter what backstory we’re provided. There’s also some foreboding dialogue about what might truly be going on here and what’s behind it that is intriguing and feels like it’s going to be hugely important, only to get no genuine payoff.
