For spooky franchise movies like The Conjuring universe, the other side of their narrative conflicts are family yarns akin to a soap opera. Last Rites is no different, placing the Warren family within a story of familial change. The film begins with an almost heartbreaking family tragedy, before pivoting to a more optimistic future. Years later, Ed & Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga) see their grown-up daughter Judy (Mia Tomlinson) bring her doting boyfriend Tony (Ben Hardy) into the fold. They’ve only been dating for a few months, with mom heavily approving of the relationship, while dad predictably is hesitant about how fast things are moving. A subplot of the film is that Ed is having health issues, putting his long-term vitality into question. Thus, his reticence towards Tony is very ironic given that the latter may be useful in helping to take care of the family, if something were to ever happen to the Warren patriarch.
That’s often the backdrop of these types of films, with The Conjuring franchise perhaps being the biggest and most famous example of horror’s most ubiquitous subgenre – There’s something wrong with the house. Underpinning most, if not all of these types of stories, is that the supernatural forces aren’t just a threat to the specific characters, but are a threat to the concept of family and the continuation of human life. A mirror of past and future, given that the supernatural can be representative of past lives, an example of humanity already extinguished.
This time around, Ed and Lorraine, ghostbusting superheroes that they are, get called to investigate potential spirits at the Smurl family home in Pennsylvania. This is adapted from the real-life stories of the 1980s Smurl Hauntings. However, since The Conjuring films take egregious creative license with their adaptations, it’s best to pretty much ignore the details of the real-life case, at least when it comes to dissecting this movie, and you should take this film purely as fiction. When the Warrens are called into action, they eventually discover that the demon at the center of this chaos is the same demon that they ran away from in terror during their first-ever paranormal investigation, some 20 years earlier. The demon nearly destroyed their family then, and threatens to annihilate both the Warrens and Smurls.
Michael Chaves returns as director here, his helming of the franchise getting off to a rocky start with 2021’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. This film is better, featuring a more engaging plot and more spectacular set pieces. Even if you don’t care much for the soap opera subplots, the scares are well executed, featuring well-designed special effects and sound. The star of the film’s cavalcade of ghouls is a gruesome-looking patriarch with an axe. His ghostly skin, evil grin, and bulging eyes are the stuff of nightmares. Chaves frames the shots of his demons well, communicating their size and physicality, priming the audience for intense jump scares as the villains lunge at or sprint at their desired targets.
Even subtle details, like the film’s sound effects, help communicate this terror as the weight of the demons is felt in how loudly they force the often wooden surfaces of the home to cackle chaotically. One of the film’s signature setpieces occurs within an array of mirrors, the demon using the setting to project a terrifying doppelganger. Far away from the complications of the pandemic that hampered the previous film, Chaves can streamline the story and effects to just focus on a good old-fashioned haunted house tale. We’re no longer dealing with such superfluous scenes like the last one’s weird excursion where Lorraine Warren almost drives off a cliff.
However, given the formulaic nature of these films, one thing that stuck out to me is – why don’t the Warrens just lead with taking out a Bible and reading from scripture to expunge the demon? In fact, take it a step further, give every character in the house a Bible, and have them ready to start casting spells regarding the Holy Spirit, in case a demon is just around the corner. You could have every character just Holy Spiriting all over the place, but I guess that would make for a less interesting movie. Instead, the film tortures its characters through a series of visions and premonitions, toughening the characters before a hellaciously intense final act. There are certain points where these horror sequences can become a little repetitive, à la It Chapter Two (2019), but the film manages to space the scares out just enough to avoid wholly assuming that comparison.
I wouldn’t fault anyone for getting bored with these films – I mean, they’ve been at it for over ten years now. If you haven’t enjoyed the previous Conjuring movies, this likely won’t do much for you as it’s much of the same. But if you enjoyed what James Wan accomplished with the first two films, this might be enjoyable as well even if it’s a step below. Last Rites is an improvement over The Devil Made Me Do It, while still being a tier below James Wan’s first two flicks. It’s perfectly adequate schlock, a combination of captivating special effects and broadly defined characters. There’s no character arc here too complicated or unpredictable, no story turn too unexpected.
It’s a formula that works well for it, a popcorn movie that’s perfectly satisfied with being a popcorn movie and nothing more. As Hollywood eventually moves on from the Warrens, it stands as an interesting chapter in horror movie-making. A franchise that didn’t reinvent the wheel, but still rewarded our love for the genre with great care, while helping to advance visual wizardry in the haunted house field. Thus, Last Rites and the films that preceded it can sit nicely as Halloween/spooky season staples, a celebration of those simplistic fright night features. It inundates us with the terror of hauntings, while also priming us to anticipate the next time there’ll be something wrong with the house.
