The Conjuring: Last Rites review
The mainline Conjuring series runs out of ideas and steam at the same time.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
The Conjuring: Last Rites
Directed by Michael Chaves
Screenplay by Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick
Starring Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Mia Tomlinson, Ben Hardy, Rebecca Calder, Elliot Cowan and Kila Lord Cassidy
The Conjuring: Last Rites Review
Sticking the landing can be hard. How many long running franchises really manage to end on a high note? The Conjuring: Last Rites almost certainly isn’t the last film in The Conjuring Universe…but it does mark the end for franchise anchoring characters (and real life inspiration) Ed and Lorraine Warren. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga have capably carried the mainline installments of The Conjuring for over a decade now. They return to Last Rites to lay their story to rest. Among other things. There is one of the major issues with the movie. A focus split into too many directions. Is this goodbye to the Warrens? A passing of the torch to their daughter Judy? Another job saving an innocent family from a demonic artifact? A love story? It’s all of those things. And, ultimately, none of them.
Endings are difficult to pull off. We said goodbye to horror icon Laurie Strode by watching a guy named Corey Cunningham. Freddy and Jason saw their original (non-remake) eras end with a Looney Tunes style battle against each other instead of fitting send-offs to hallmarks of the slasher era. If you want to push their cutoff earlier…Wes Craven does give his creation a brilliant finale in New Nightmare. Jason was adrift in space. Or body swapping his way out of Hell. Or on a boat that barely ever reaches Manhattan. Let’s not even get into anything Leatherface related in the last (nearly) four decades. The Conjuring: Last Rites knows what it wants to do with its characters. Unfortunately, the answer is too much and not enough.
Ed and Lorraine battle an evil mirror with the help of their now adult daughter Judy (Mia Tomlinson) and her fiancé Tony (Ben Hardy). The mirror is connected to their past/Judy’s birth and, of late, has been terrorizing a Pennsylvania family. The Warrens have retired from their demon fighting days due to Ed’s weak heart…but this case proves too important to turn away from. Eventually.
The number one issue with The Conjuring: Last Rites is how long it takes to do things. The Warrens don’t even find out about the mirror’s return until AN HOUR AND FORTY MINUTES into the story. We see some attempted spookiness regarding the Smurl family…but it’s interrupted with long scenes of the Warren family…just…living life, I guess. It’s impossible for any kind of suspenseful tone to take hold when you spend twenty minutes watching a family cookout in broad daylight. Which is…the second major issue with The Conjuring: Last Rites. This isn’t a case where a movie doesn’t know what it wants to do. It’s a case where the movie chooses to do too much.
The Smurl storyline, the Warrens’ attempt to move on from being hands on demonologists and the romance between Judy and Tony split the story’s focus three ways. And two-thirds of it would better suit a romantic dramedy than a horror movie. None of these aspects are independently bad…but they don’t all fit together. Even when the story finally converges them all in the final act. Judy has inherited her mother’s abilities…something we’ve known since (at least) Annabelle Comes Home. Her struggle to deal with it and bring her boyfriend turned new fiancé into the fold is a decent storyline. Ed wanting to help people but being unable to physically do so is a decent storyline. The Smurl family trying to survive a haunting while desperately searching for help is a decent storyline. Combined, The Conjuring: Last Rites is less than the sum of its parts.
Luckily…there is a floor to how bad watching Farmiga and Wilson play these roles can be. While Last Rites can’t muster up any new scares…it occasionally works as a family story. Which means part of what they hoped to accomplish here was successful. On paper…it even reads like an appropriate conclusion to the main Conjuring franchise. You get to see Ed and Lorraine deal with retirement…be drawn into one last case…and pass the baton to the next generation of Warrens. Unfortunately, Last Rites is about as exciting as reading it on paper would be. The thrill is gone. The Conjuring Universe can now take its place among the rest of the artifacts inside the Warrens’ locked room. At least until The Nun or some other spinoff returns, of course.
Scare Value
There might be an edit of The Conjuring: Last Rites that makes it a more worthy finale for the story of Ed and Lorraine Warren. This isn’t it. Lacking the scares of its predecessors and replacing it with a focus split in too many directions, Last Rites sends the mainline Conjuring series out with a whimper instead of a bang. There’s a floor to how bad a movie led by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson can be. The Conjuring: Last Rites finds it.
2/5
The Conjuring: Last Rites Link
Buy tickets on Fandango
