If the whole of The Conjuring: Last Rites were as good as the first 2/3rds, we’d have a new franchise best. Director Michael Chaves and writer David Leslie-McGoldrick, having worked on numerous entries in the franchise, create a story that overlaps the human drama and the supernatural with ease, giving more life to the Warren family as a whole. It’s unfortunate that its climax is a mixed bag, and while it never gets so disjointed that it ruins the movie, it never reaches the heights of what preceded it. Still, even if there’s a sense of lost potential, the film as a whole makes for a satisfying conclusion to the beloved horror series.
Last Rites re-introduces Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) through a lecture, giving us a distant, clinical view of their work. The few students present make jokes about Ghostbusters, but the Warrens don’t mind too much. They’ve retired from the real thing, and seem to have a happy life, as evidenced by Ed’s birthday party. It’s packed to the gills with friends and family, talking about scars inflicted by the demonically possessed while grilling hot dogs.
It’s easy to see how they think they could just move on from their line of work, but death still lingers over the entire Warren clan. Ed has suffered a heart attack, which haunts him in a way similar to Lorraine’s visions. Both have moments where they’re engaged in the world around them, only for something to haunt them that no one else can sense, leading to them disengaging with the surface world around them. In Lorraine’s case, it’s the spirit world. In Ed’s case it’s his heart.
Death also lingers over their daughter, Judy, (Mia Tomlinson). Judy has a bigger part than in previous entries. We learn a demon was present at her birth and it nearly prevented her first breath. When she finally takes it, the film cuts to a montage of Judy growing up, running around their backyard, on a carousel. Towards the end of this montage, a crying Judy runs to her mother. We might expect these tears to be from something common, like a bully or a scraped knee. Instead, they’re from visions that haunt her, visions only her own mother can understand. Lorraine tells Judy she has to tune them out, and when Judy doubts she can do this, Lorraine ends the scene by telling her “you can.” Lorraine is right—but only to a point.
Long after this montage, the Warren family are eating at a restaurant. They’re all having a pleasant chat, making little jokes about Judy’s boyfriend Tony (Ben Hardy), until the waitress comes, and Lorraine catches Judy anxiously whispering, almost imperceptibly. These ominous whispers are how Judy is meant to tune out the demons, and that her whispers are so anxious, so quiet, that only a medium like Lorraine can perceive them, tells us Judy’s struggles are deeply entrenched in her being. That she feels she has no escape. What’s worse is that Lorraine’s encouraging “you can” is undercut by Lorraine herself. When Judy tells her mother she no longer wants to just avoid the spirit world and wants to confront it, a solemn Lorraine tells Judy the opposite of what she was told as a child: “you can’t.” However encouraging Lorraine was to the younger Judy, in telling her she can tune out the outside world, she was only encouraging one specific skill, and discouraging anything outside it.
Their desire to avoid the darkness won’t stop it from coming to them, though. Last Rites gives us the sense that a looming threat from the Warren’s past wants to find its way back to them, and will make another family suffer to get their attention. This brings us to the Smurls. The Conjuring films have always split their drama between the Warrens and the haunted family, and, at least for the first two/thirds, Last Rites is no different. The Smurl family is a large one, and to establish them, we’re given a scene where they’re preparing for Heather’s (Kila Lord Cassidy) confirmation. The camera glides on one unbroken shot throughout the house, watching these different dynamics and generations bounce off each other. It’s only after the actual confirmation, when Grandpa (Peter Wight) just so happens to pick the creepiest possible mirror as a confirmation present that things fall apart.
The Smurls suffer a variety of threats. In the previously mentioned unbroken shot, the two youngest daughters, Shannon and Carin (Molly Cartwright and Tilly Walker) play a prank on their mother Janet (Rebecca Calder) by pulling on the phone cord from inside the dark kitchen cabinet. Later, Janet’s on the phone again, and someone’s pulling on the phone cord in the kitchen cabinet again. If you guessed that neither Shannon nor Carin are in the cabinet this time, you guessed right.
However, the highlight of Last Rites is the scene where Heather investigates family videos to find any evidence of what could be haunting them. When Heather walks to the television, a light from a large truck illuminates their living room, but after the truck passes, Heather turns on the television, and the dim, garish static from the television becomes our focus. When the actual video comes up, Heather’s reflection on the screen makes her look like a ghost in her own memory. She obsessively rewinds and pauses the video, trying to get to the exact moment that will prove a ghostly presence.
She eventually gets her wish, and more than she bargained for, as the image on the television begins to cycle upwards, moving like film strips on a reel, and forcing Heather to look beyond the television frame, looking at what could be eyes staring at her in the dark. Suddenly, the truck lights return. Now synonymous with the supernatural threat, the way they violently invade the living room forces Heather to look around a previously safe space with terror. The sequence isn’t just scary: it’s fun for the audience to watch. Fun to be conscious of where your eyes are looking, fun to give in to the lighting, and fun in how it keeps you on the edge of your seat.
It’s a shame, then, that Last Rites rushes into a disjointed climax. The Warrens discover the haunted object traumatizing the Smurls is something from their past, the two families seem to have a nice moment of exposition about how your past catches up with you and then, just like that, we’re in a climax that’s superficially crammed with supernatural threats. It’s not just enough that they have to get the heavy demon MacGuffin out of the attic, the attic floor must also be in danger of giving way.
It’s not enough that the ghosts are after Janet and her youngest children, there has to be an oddly overlong bit where they can’t get a door open. It’s easy to see where the filmmakers were coming from with these threats, but they don’t add to the tension so much as they disorient it. Even some stronger moments, such as a wild shot that starts on the ground, flies up and spins around the house, only to go crashing down to Earth as it follows Lorraine, feel lost in the rush of the pacing. On top of this, there’s no real resolution for the Smurl family. After the climax, they’re given an expository title card that explains how much longer they lived in the house, and that’s it.
However, as disappointing as this quick resolution for the Smurls’ may be, and despite a mixed bag of a climax, there’s enough talent and love on display to make Last Rites a worthy conclusion to the decade spanning franchise. It doesn’t get too in the weeds of trying to retroactively tie up all 9 movies with nonsense like a singular big bad that was behind everything all along (yes, the demon is a singular threat from their past, but it’s not some all-encompassing big bad: Palpatine in Rise of Skywalker he is not). Instead, the filmmakers focused on a grander family drama for the Warrens, bigger scares, and some delectable lighting. If that’s what you’re looking for, know that Last Rites delivers.
