The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025)
Directed by: Michael Chaves
Premise: The fourth film in the titular Conjuring series. Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) investigate a haunting that is linked to their first case.
What Works: The Conjuring series spans four titular films plus six spinoffs and side stories. The franchise has varied in quality but the core Conjuring films were easily the best installments in part because they were better made but also because of the characterization of the Warren family. This asset is leveraged in Last Rites. This film begins with Ed and Lorraine Warren retired from supernatural investigations. Meanwhile their daughter (Mia Tomlinson) is now grown and in a serious relationship. The family moments feel genuine and give the film a humanistic quality as well as a sense of age. Last Rites is also better made than some of the other entries in this series. That’s especially true of the haunting scenes. Dark moments in the Conjuring pictures tend to look murky. Last Rites is better lit, allowing us to see the action while setting the mood. The supernatural confrontations of other Conjuring films tended to be shrill with unnecessarily loud soundtracks and over the top effects of the characters thrown against walls by supernatural forces. Some of that happens in Last Rites but it is restrained to a credible scale. What makes these kinds of movies scary is the atmosphere of dread and the lead up to the reveal. Last Rites does this pretty well, certainly better than the Conjuring spinoff films.
What Doesn’t: As a whole, The Conjuring series tends to be very repetitive. That’s true of a lot of franchise films especially in the horror genre but the creative range of the Conjuring series is especially narrow. Most of these stories are essentially the same with the Warrens helping a family whose home has been haunted. The Warrens haven’t grown as characters nor have they deepened their knowledge of the supernatural or come to new understandings of good and evil. The mythology of the series has been relatively static. Even the design of the supernatural creatures and the style of the hauntings is consistent. Last Rites is more of the same. Last Rites is billed as the final entry in the Conjuring series (we’ll see) but it isn’t much of a finale. There’s little sense that the characters have reached some kind of epiphany. The previous film, The Devil Made Me Do It, was a more satisfying sendoff for the characters and the series.
Bottom Line: The Conjuring: Last Rites is a satisfactory installment of this franchise. The movie is scary and gives the fans what they want and expect. It’s also more of the same, done slightly better but not much different from the earlier films.
Episode: #1064 (September 14, 2025)