The Conjuring - Last Rites

Warren Piece

The Conjuring - Last Rites
Directed by Michael Chaves
Canada/USA 2025
Atomic Monster
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Slight plot spoilers.

The Conjuring - Last Rites is the fourth and, allegedly (don’t believe it for a minute unless the box office really tanks), final of the main, pure stream of the Conjuringverse (or Warrenverse would perhaps be more apt?) movies which, by my count, makes it the seventh of the ten films in the franchise to date to feature Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga  as real life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Now, I heard a really allergic review to this movie by one of my favourite reviewers which damned this film for being about something that has since been debunked (again, allegedly) and for going to way too supernatural places that are unlikely to have happened in real life. 

All I will say about that is that, since The Conjuring 2 - The Enfield Case (as it was known over here in the UK and reviewed by me here) it’s pretty obvious the films... which originally included input from The Warrens themselves, in the very early stages and were designed to be scary dramatisations, if memory serves... are extremely enhanced, to say the least, renderings of what may or may not have happened. And I personally don’t really care... these were designed to be supernatural entertainments, first and foremost so, not bothered, it’s not a problem for me.

Maybe that’s why I responded so positively to this one. 

The film starts off in 1966 when Lorraine is pregnant with their child Judy and The Warrens go to try and help a young woman being plagued by a demon in a mirror. It goes wrong and the unborn baby is affected and stillborn... for about a minute... before being brought back to life by the power of prayer and, of course, she grows up to be the child we are familiar with, at different ages, in the previous films in the franchise. We then jump 20 years to the main timeline of the film, where Ed is still suffering from the dodgy heart condition that plagued him during The Conjuring - The Devil Made Me Do It (reviewed here) and so the couple, while still giving lectures, have retired from helping people with their ‘special set of skills’. However, after the mirror from the opening of the movie turns up in another state and the demon within starts terrorising another family, it’s not too long before, due to their daughter finding herself pulled to the house where the evil now dwells, The Warrens are back on the case. 

Okay, so this is the usual melange of clichéd formula including camera misdirection, almost subconscious levels of sound design, lurking dread and jump scares but, as I’ve mentioned before in regards to these films, the people involved in these really know how to do these things well and it works in spades in this one. This is touted as a last hurrah for the main characters and, although I said I’m not ruling out another one, the ending of this movie very much goes out of its way to bring some closure to the lives of Ed and Lorraine Warren, so if they do decide not to do another one, this has an appropriate ending as a jumping off point, at least. 

And, like I said, I really loved this one. I didn’t find the criticisms I’ve heard against the film hold up in any way and I was generally impressed with it. The only two movies in this whole franchise I’d not really got on with are the previous movie, The Devil Made Me Do It and the first of the three Annabelle spin offs. This one, I’m glad to say, is certainly a lot better than those two at any rate and so I was pretty happy throughout the screening. And I don’t want to say too much else about The Conjuring - Last Rites because I dont want to spoil anything so, other than to say it had some nice cameos at the end and an excellent score by Benjamin Wallfisch (which, of course, hasn’t had a proper CD release at time of writing, so I guess I won’t be able to listen to the score away from the movie again), I'll leave it there. So... yeah... I thought this one was a pretty decent demonic entity movie and I’ll definitely be in line for the Blu Ray when it gets a release.