The Conjuring: Last Rites Review

The Conjuring: Last Rites Review

The tenth and supposedly final film in The Conjuring franchise, The Conjuring: Last Rites drops in theaters. This is a film that I’ve been very curious to check out because I watched all of The Conjuring films leading up to this film. What did I think of the latest installment? Let’s talk about it!

The Good

Right off the bat the thing you have to talk about given that this one of the main line Conjuring films are Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren. These are some of the best horror characters of all time and so much of that is that they feel like movie characters but also feel real. It’s probably helped that Ed and Lorraine are based on real people so there’s more material for them to pull from. But they’re characters that you’re invested in and want to see spend more time with them. They’re absolutely the best part of this film and maybe of the franchise as a whole. They bring so much relatability to a very fantastical and haunted film. Given the plot of this film and where Ed and Lorraine are at in life, they’re having to give very different performances. They’re getting older, they’re having to deal with their daughter as an adult. The plot of the film revolves around them coming out of retirement for one final case and there’s a reluctant nature to them doing this because they’ve moved on and they want to find peace in their lives and enjoy their futures. They still have the charm that they bring to these movies but since they’re older and we’re seeing them in a different phase of life the performances are different and feel more layered. 

From there, I think with an installment directed by Michael Chaves his directing style gets better. This was the guy that WB trusted with this franchise after James Wan left. He’s directed the last three films in this franchise, plus The Curse of La Llorona. I think Last Rites is his best directed film. There’s multiple sequences that are directed very well and have this tension built into them. The opening sequence of the film even though you know what’s going to happen, it’s this horrific situation happening that you still feel this dread and danger of what’s going on. It builds the tension and the thrills at all of the right moments. Some shots in the third act where the camera is outside of the house and pans into the house, but it’s done very well and in such a dynamic fashion. It adds creative flourishes to this film that pop and elevate this film just a little bit for me. I know people are sick and tired of Chaves directing these films and they want James Wan back. In a lot of ways, I agree with them. James Wan is a much better director. I’m not as bothered by it probably because I don’t have many emotional ties to this franchise. I didn’t watch the original till June of this year. Perhaps if I was a bigger fan of this franchise and watched it from day one I’d have a more cynical view of Chaves as a director.

The other thing to talk about here is this film was marketed as the final chapter with these characters. The tag line for the film is “the case that ended it all”. But even with that being the tagline and how the film was marketed. Even the producers of the film said The Conjuring: Last Rites, closes out phase 1 of this franchise. I don’t really know what that means. But let’s pretend that this is actually the final film in the franchise and our last adventure with Ed and Lorraine Warren, I’m satisfied with where they left things. The way they close out the franchise as our last adventure with these characters, I thought it worked. There’s a few things that bothered me about it (we’ll talk about that later). But overall the note they end things and what happens in the final moments I thought was the right ending for these characters. Because it’s closing out their story this is The Conjuring film with the most emotion in it. Judy Warren, their daughter plays a pretty major role in the film and her arc in the film brings out a lot of emotion because we’ve been on this journey with them and we’ve spent a lot of time with them. 

Speaking of Judy Warren, I actually liked her placement in the film. Mia Tomlinson plays the grownup version of Judy and she does a good job. I was pretty surprised how much she was in the film because she wasn’t really in the marketing for the film. In the past films she’s been a side character sort of just there to show the context for the Warren’s every day lives outside of this horrific stuff happening. Here, she’s helping Ed and Lorraine with the plot and getting involved with the action. Without spoiling anything, where they take her character in the back half was very interesting and I thought worked for the context of the film and the themes established in this franchise. The other part about her that was really surprising was her boyfriend in the film played by Ben Hardy. When he was introduced I really wasn’t sure about him and wasn’t sure if I’d like him by the end of the film. I liked what he brought to the film, he and Tomlinson have great chemistry with each other. They wrote Hardy’s character to be more dimensional when he knows about Ed and Lorraine’s job but doesn’t care and he’s willing to get in on the action because he loves her. At first, it felt a bit random to have in the film but by the end of it they won me over. 

Finally, like the previous films this film has a really nice sense of humor about it. I might say that this is the funniest film in The Conjuring franchise. Maybe some of that is because I watched this film in a packed theater but I watched the other ones at home by myself. But there were multiple jokes in this film that had me and my theater laughing a fair amount of times in the film. There’s some jokes between Patrick Wilson and Ben Hardy at a birthday party that were really funny. Patrick’s expressions during that scene brought a lot of great comedy during the birthday party sequence.

The Bad

The big thing here is that on a scary level, this franchise didn’t really do much for me. With this film, I found the scares to be more predictable and lazy. It’s a lot of pretty classic and typical jump scares where a character stands in a dark room with only a flashlight and something pops out at them. It’s that level of horror and “scares” in the film and that’s just lazy. I think that’s maybe where people are frustrated with Chaves taking over the franchise is he’s not as good of a HORROR director as James Wan. Wan was able to craft these scary sequences using practical effects and having people whipped back and forth against the wall. That’s what made those first two Conjuring films so good and effective. When you get to this film it’s just cheap jump scares that any director could do. I think that’s why none of the films in this universe have come close to the quality of The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2, because none of them are on the same level as James Wan. It even uses the trick of having a character with a flashlight so the only thing visible is what’s in the flashlight’s view. 

The other thing here is that in the final moments of the film there’s some cameos and ways they try to wrap the franchise up with a nice bow that felt so distracting and kind of pulled me out of the moment. I can see what they were going for and what kind of emotions they were trying to evoke but it just felt weird. The people that do appear don’t make sense for why they would be at this location given their connections to this franchise and these characters. There’s one cameo in here that some people will catch but other people might not catch. I’m on the side that did catch it and it felt super distracting and kind of breaks the rules of this universe with who appears in this film. 

Finally, I thought there were multiple points in time with this film where it felt like they cut things from the film to make it shorter. Right now, the film is 2 hours and 15 minutes long which I believe is the longest film of the franchise. But it felt like they had a cut that was 10-15 minutes longer and they tried to cut it down as much as they could. There’s a scene involving the grandmother that comes out of nowhere and it sort of just happens with no explanation and it’s not followed up on. There’s conversations between Ed and Lorraine that feel like something happened right before the scene that was cut. I don’t know if this movie was cut down to make it shorter and not have it be 2 ½ hours long, but I think a longer version of this film would’ve been better.  

Final Thoughts: The Conjuring: Last Rites is a frustrating film because there’s so many elements in here that the film gets right. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are of course great in their roles and they’re having to portray these characters at very different stages in their lives. There’s some creative flourishes that Michael Chaves brings to the film as the director. But there’s some issues with the runtime, the cameos, and the scares that hold it back. The Rotten Tomatoes score for this film had been all over the place. It debuted with 55%, it went up to 68%, then it dropped to 58%. As of right now, the film holds a 53%. I’m very curious to see what the conversation surrounding this film is going to be because it seems to be polarizing. 

The Score: 8.3/10 (B)