‘The Conjuring: Last Rites’ is a Drawn-Out Conclusion to a Dependable Franchise [Review]

It’s been twelve years since the first Conjuring movie was released, or I should say, unleashed on the general public in 2013. Since then, there have been multiple movies released in an attempt to create a Conjuring cinematic universe. That attempt might have dulled or tainted the outstanding quality of the original movie, but it no doubt was a monster financial success. Horror franchises throughout history have been pretty strange because the quality of the subsequent films ranges so drastically, and it oddly enhances the power of the originals when in other genres, it seems to be the total opposite, and mostly just enrages the intended audience. Franchises quite simply just work best in horror. The Conjuring franchise is like a franchise cheat code. Having the war chest of villains that literally sit in the basement of the main characters’ home is an unfair advantage. But, with that said, in my opinion, I believe the Conjuring franchise kind of squandered the opportunities a little bit. I mostly enjoy the movies from this franchise, especially The Conjuring 2, which is outstanding, but after that I feel like they failed to capitalize on a golden opportunity. Like I said though, I really do thoroughly enjoy most of the movies in this franchise, as I’d had seven of them rated at least ‘Good’ if not better than that, and at the bare minimum they are all watchable. The most recent entry, The Conjuring: Last Rites, is like a swan song (most likely), and I would say it handles the goodbye well, is a super enjoyable movie, but is overlong and isn’t without its flaws. So, let’s get into The Conjuring: Last Rites…

First and foremost, it’s important to point out that this franchise most likely doesn’t have the legs to last this long without the downright outstanding job that James Wan and his team did with the original movie. The Conjuring, which was written by Chad and Carey Hayes and directed by Wan was a pretty perfect horror movie, executed flawlessly on all fronts. Visually speaking, the filmmaking technique and scares presented are so dark and so haunting that it gets under anyone’s skin, even for the folks that don’t scare easily. The score done by Joseph Bishara, who also composed the psychotic Insidious score knocked this one out of the park. The soundscape and musical cues are so on point at all times. The Conjuring is shot beautifully, performed outstandingly by a stable of seasoned vets who aren’t by any means known for starring in horror movies, which makes it all the more interesting to see them thrust in an intense horror movie like this. And most importantly, the casting of the two leads, and faces of the franchise, Patrick Wilson as Ed Warren and Vera Farmiga as Lorraine Warren, are so perfect for these roles that it doesn’t make any sense that they were able to see that beforehand. Wilson and Farmiga bring such a likable levity that grounds the film with great acting, but also are able to keep it light and fun.  

Because The Conjuring was such a hit, like I mentioned, it spawned a slew of sequels. These sequels focused mostly on the Annabelle doll, made famous in the original, and also The Nun set of movies, focusing on the titular Nun, made famous in the second Conjuring movie. The franchise bounces around between these stories, with Annabelle and The Nun serving as their own origin stories in overlapping time periods that sometimes involve the Warrens, and sometimes don’t. The writers, directors and teams behind these movies varied between different faces who are popular filmmakers in the horror genre, like David F. Sandberg, Corin Hardy, Gary Dauberman and Michael Chaves. Chaves has been at the helm of the movies in the Conjuring franchise for the last three entries. The scares are always there in these movies, and it’s an unfair task, but none of the movies that follow the original two, which were done by Wan, really hold up to that quality. It’s a different game that Wan is playing at a different speed from anyone not just in this franchise, but the horror genre as a whole and is in my opinion, one of the best to ever do it. Of course, Wan has been the primary creative steward throughout, but it’s worth noting…  

The Conjuring franchise is so financially sound that it’s actually jaw dropping. These movies are all made for mid-budget, meaning in the range of twenty to forty million, and clear two hundred million at the worldwide box office with ease, most of the time even eclipsing three hundred million. This has been a dream come true for Warner Bros., and if I know those studios like I think I do, I can’t imagine a world where the Conjuring franchise goes away, even if Last Rites doesn’t perform on par with the others, which is looking likely at this point. Regardless, four of the ten highest-grossing movies of the 2010s were Conjuring franchise movies. It’s wildly impressive and a credit to the effectiveness of the original to dominate the box office like that throughout the entirety of the decade…

Okay, I’m rambling now, let’s get into The Conjuring: Last Rites…

The Conjuring: Last Rites, from director Michael Chaves and starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, is technically the fourth Conjuring movie, after the original, the sequel, the disliked The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (which even with its flaws, I really enjoyed) and now The Conjuring: Last Rites. Last Rites sees the story of Ed and Lorraine jump a few timelines, starting with them as young paranormal investigators at the beginning, and then fast forwarding to being the last movie in the Conjuring timeline. Ed and Lorraine have an older daughter at this point, with this daughter, Judy, being a key player in the offshoot Annabelle movies, but never being totally involved with the Conjuring movies. Judy, played by Mia Tomlinson, is a college-aged woman at this point, not a little girl anymore, and has a boyfriend, Tony, played by Ben Hardy, who is introduced early on and becomes a key piece, as well as a true to real life figure as well. Judy struggles with the paranormal/psychic abilities that Lorraine passed onto her at birth, which becomes a sort of key plot to the story. Like all Conjuring movies, there is a paranormal haunting occurring far from the Warrens that they get called into. This time, the haunting is in coal mining country Pennsylvania. The Smurl family, a big family of ten or so, lives in a house on a haunted piece of land, but they also obtain a haunted mirror, and from there, all hell breaks loose. The Warren’s show up after a tragedy related to the haunting hits close to home, and along with Judy and Tony, do their thing, battling haunted figures from their past as well as new ones in the present, with sneaky little Annabelle finding a way to get involved as well. The rest of the movie plays out as per usual, sticking to the script and what worked beforehand, but severely overdoing it when it should have been kept much simpler and more straightforward. Let me explain…

I’ll start with what I really like about this movie. Everything at the Smurl house is visually awesome, scary as hell and works really well with the performers they have. I wanted to spend more time with them and this haunting, just like the Perron family in Rhode Island from the original, and the Hodgson family in London from the second Conjuring. The way the Smurls are introduced is typical Conjuring with the one-of-a-kind freeze frame into the title card (low-key maybe my favorite part of the series, along with the score). The Smurls are in hell at this house, and instead of the Warren’s coming to save the day, and act as specters looming over the story with minimal but maximized screen-time to save the day, just like how they were used in one and two, and sort of three, which worked really great, instead this movie is primarily Warren-centric. Which I can’t complain about too much as I love Farmiga and Wilson, but I also think it really minimizes the impact that the Smurls have on this story. I can’t even remember any of the family members, because they weren’t actual key figures in this story, even though the haunting of their house is the engine of the story. With that said, the technical filmmaking and scary scene designs are well-conceived and well-executed. Michael Chaves understands how to make a Conjuring movie look like a Conjuring movie, maybe more than anyone besides Wan. But, Last Rites story-wise is poorly executed compared to its predecessors. There are some heartfelt moments that bring levity, but there are too many of them, too emotional, and too focused on telling the story of the Warren family instead of telling the story of a haunting…

This leads me to what I don’t like about this movie. The prologue with young Ed and Lorraine has a few effective scares, but is far too long, and in my opinion, could have been trimmed in half, if not trimmed more than that, if not left out altogether. It’s not spoiling anything to say the demon they meet early on ends up being a key demonic figure in the haunting throughout and then later in the movie, but the more I think about it, the more I dislike that approach. The Warren’s have pissed off enough demons to the point where it becomes a little cartoonish if the demons are all trying to exact their revenge. What I loved about the first movie, and less about the second, was the simplicity of the characters which allowed for the story to flow at a much better pace. To be frank, I simply just do not care about interpersonal relationships between the Warren family, especially since what is portrayed on screen is far from reality. So why even bother with all of that? If it’s not an accurate portrayal, and it’s not entertaining enough or works well enough to give any weight to the stakes of the story, then it makes no sense to even bother. Not that it matters, I just get frustrated that we are wasting thirty minutes for no reason whatsoever on interpersonal, corny, boring, and purely fictional fluff. If I had a say, I’d say cut out thirty minutes of all the Warren family stuff, return the Warrens to being the specters looming over the story, floating in and out to provide important context and get their hands dirty at the scene of the haunting. Focusing more on the haunting itself, and the mystery behind the haunting. I feel as though that could have led to a leaner, meaner, and more memorable experience. Important to note I’m not a runtime snob. Quite the opposite actually. The more movie, the better. I’m a stickler for pace though, and if I can feel the length, then it’s too long or failing to find focus. The Conjuring: Last Rites feels very scattered with so much going on all over the place, villains that aren’t very clear to the audience and confusing time jumps. By the time we are two hours in, you feel the runtime and there is still fifteen minutes left. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of scares, I just wish it leaned more into an onslaught of scares rather than an onslaught of family matters…

This leads me directly into why I think this franchise squandered an opportunity. Ed and Lorraine are paranormal investigators with a war chest of demons in their basement. There are tons of real-life hauntings and stories where they could have catapulted this fictional version of the Warrens into with more of a serial style of storytelling, where the Warrens are the James Bond or Indiana Jones being freshly thrust into a new ghost/paranormal story. These are fictional representations anyway, so that could have been a very entertaining way to go about this, considering the endless amount of story possibilities, either real or fictional. The expansion into exploring more about the Annabelle doll and the Nun figure in separate movies was a great and obvious idea, leading to entertaining movies, but for the two Conjuring movies that came after the original two, it left much to be desired…

Tying a franchise together by nostalgia mongering is commonplace right now in the movie business. Standalone sequels that have no real relation to what came before and what comes after seem to be deemed bad business for whatever reason. I feel as though I see it all the time now where a valuable IP can lead to the cannibalization of that IP by trying to circle the wagons and misidentify what the audience liked about the original movie in the first place. Focusing on the things that the audience doesn’t care about and throwing scraps at us like we are a bunch of circus lions just hoping to feast on the same regurgitated stuff over and over and over again. Instead of taking a risk and exploring new territory, the safe play is to play the hits, cater to the audience’s nostalgia and do what has proven to work. It’s jukebox filmmaking that doesn’t provide the audience with something they will remember for years and years. It’s only comfort food that is quickly forgotten and lacks any sort of originality that will rattle an audience and lead to discourse. Even though it’s not a bad movie, I feel like The Conjuring: Last Rites falls into that comfort food category, when there is every opportunity to do something that could rattle the audience to its core, and be memorable. A movie like this would never fully crater because it knows how to play the hits for what works, but it also seems to have no interest in taking that risk to try something that could be great, but could also end up being a total disaster… 

Overall, even though I have major issues with the approach to the storytelling, I think some of the scary scenes in The Conjuring: Last Rites are phenomenal, and on the technical side, it’s an A+, as usual. The Conjuring universe is always one that I will keep coming back to and will always enjoy, even if it doesn’t continue past this entry, although I still do believe that’s doubtful and it would be incredibly annoying if that was some kind of promotional tactic. The cynic in me will always believe it’s all a ploy, but the optimist part of me did get choked up at the end when they were fully leaning into this being the swan song for two of horror’s better characters, Ed and Lorraine Warren, as well as that Conjuring atmosphere itself, and all of the great performers and filmmakers who were involved. The man with the axe in Last Rites wasn’t exactly Bathsheba, Valak the Nun, or Annabelle in terms of effectiveness, nor were the other evil entities in this movie, but the scary scenes themselves are wholly worthy of the price of admission. I would give The Conjuring: Last Rites a thumbs up as popcorn entertainment, but as an artifact of horror history, I’d say this is mostly forgettable…

Wicked Horror Rating: 6.5/10

From Atomic Monster & New Line Cinema by way of Warner Bros. The Conjuring: Last Rites is playing exclusively in theaters as of September 5th, 2025.