‘THE CONJURING: LAST RITES’ Drops the Sinister For a Saccharine Sendoff

Ed and Lorraine Warren have been at the center of WB’s expansive Conjuring franchise for its entire 12-year run. They’ve appeared, or at least been mentioned, in all nine of the core entries and spin-offs. With The Conjuring: Last Rites, allegedly the final film featuring Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, the married paranormal investigators finally get a sendoff. The trouble is: that sendoff comes in the form of the franchise’s low point. Last Rites is abominably paced, way overlong, and almost completely devoid of scares. By the time we bid farewell to the Warrens, we’re so far removed from everything that made the early Conjuring films effective nightmare fuel that we’re honestly relieved to see them go.

Though the third film, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, already marked a notable drop in quality – thanks in no small part to the departure of director and universe architect James Wan – this final sequel doesn’t implode so much as it quietly deflates. It’s not a spectacular failure, but it is spectacularly disappointing.
Not everything in Michael Chaves’ film is bad, though. The cold open—featuring a younger version of the Warrens on their first case, while Lorraine is pregnant—isn’t especially scary, but an encounter with a demonic force that leads to her prematurely giving birth at least sets the scene. It taps into the emotional current that has always powered the better entries in this franchise: belief and togetherness. That thread carries into the film’s core themes, with Ed and Lorraine’s daughter Judy (Mia Tomlinson) and her boyfriend Tony (Ben Hardy) taking center stage in a story about familial bonds and supernatural inheritance.

The problem is, Ed and Lorraine were always the least interesting part of these movies and here, their family drama dominates almost every scene. Their screen time is so overwhelming, we barely have time to register the Smurl family, the ones actually being haunted. This multigenerational crew of eight—including Jack (Elliot Coward), Dawn (Beau Gadsden), Janet (Rebecca Calder), Heather (Kila Lord Cassidy), and others—are given the most cursory introductions. We learn virtually nothing about these cardboard cutouts, and Last Rites never invests in the rhythm or escalation of their haunting. They receive a big old mirror with three baby heads (yes, the same haunted relic that once triggered Lorraine’s early labor), and within minutes they’re vomiting blood and seeing apparitions. No buildup, no tension—just instant spook overload.

Against all odds, horror maestro Mike Flanagan managed to make mirrors scary in his super underrated 2013 film Oculus, but Chaves fails entirely to do the same. The fact that the “case that ended it all” for the Warrens revolves around a spooky mirror is confounding, especially when there’s so little lore connecting them to this particular possessed artifact. There’s a black-mouthed, shaggy-haired apparition wielding an axe and a demented granny helping to haunt the mirror, but their appearances can’t even muster a proper jump scare. And this is where Last Rites fails most: there are no scares, and it’s even lacking the basic kind of atmospheric, ambient dread that could at least substitute for a decent jolt. What’s on screen is tired and redundant, with Chaves failing to do anything remotely new or interesting to liven up the proceedings. Even the performances from the leads aren’t exactly phoned in, but they’re tired, checked out, over it. Much like the Warrens in the movie, more than ready for retirement.

And though my viewing wasn’t helped by a dim projection, the action was hard to track, especially in the final act. It was dark, muddy, and visually incoherent, ineffective at framing a scare or even translating what is happening in any given moment. The film grammar has always been very sharp in these movies. Patient camera movement used to build tension, blocking that escalated the dread, a deliberate rhythm to each reveal. This one just… isn’t. On nearly every front. It’s visually sloppy, often emotionally weightless, and structurally unfocused. Nothing really hits. Not the scares, not the stakes, not even the sentimental beats the film is so desperate to land.

All of this is made worse by the fact that the movie is 135 minutes—the longest in the franchise—and the Warrens spend the first hour and a half (!!!) talking about family melodrama. Is their daughter too young to marry? Why are their lectures poorly attended? Will they finally write their tell-all book? Does Ed have dangerously high cholesterol? These are the burning questions we’re stuck with before the Warrens set foot in the undercooked haunted house. It’s all fat, no meat, a movie that completely forgets why anyone liked these films in the first place: they were scary as hell.

CONCLUSION: The Conjuring universe wraps up Ed and Lorraine’s story with a disappointingly flat coda that focuses more of their family drama than it does actual haunting. Not scary, way too long, and rather rote in terms of its filmmaking, ‘The Conjuring: Last Rites‘ is only haunted by its past successes.