It’s always fun to revisit Seven Days’ reviews of the movies that kicked off long-running franchises. In 2013, critic Rick Kisonak slammed James Wan’s horror hit The Conjuring, calling it derivative of The Amityville Horror and noting that self-styled demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, on whom the main characters were based, were “supernatural self-promoters.”
He wasn’t wrong, and the spotlight that the film and its sequels placed on the real-life (now dead) Warrens didn’t improve their reputation. Accusations of grifting flew, and in 2017 the Hollywood Reporter divulged a woman’s allegations that Ed had seduced and cohabited with her when she was underage, with Lorraine’s knowledge. That’s a far cry from the world of the films, which portray the Warrens as a devout, deeply loving couple.
Horror fans have always taken the words “based on a true story” with a mountain of salt, however. Fictional or factual, The Conjuring scared people enough to spawn multiple spin-off series. Today, the “Conjuring Universe” encompasses nine movies about demonic hauntings, evil dolls and ghostly nuns, some starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as the Warrens and others not. Now, the two actors return for the fourth and supposedly final tale of the couple’s exploits, directed by Michael Chaves (The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It).
The deal
In 1964, a very pregnant Lorraine Warren (Farmiga) investigates a haunting in an antique shop containing a creepy mirror. A scare sends her into labor, and her daughter, Judy, barely survives the birth. (For the record, the real Judy Warren was born in 1946.)
Judy (Mia Tomlinson) inherits Lorraine’s psychic sensitivity, so her mother teaches her to shut out evil presences by reciting a nursery rhyme. By 1986, Ed’s (Wilson) heart condition has convinced him to retire from the demon-hunting game.
But the mirror isn’t done with the Warrens. Thanks to a bizarre choice of confirmation gift, the evil antique lands in the home of the Smurls, a working-class family in Pennsylvania coal country. When young Heather (Kíla Lord Cassidy) tries to destroy it, everything goes sideways, and eventually the fates of the Smurls and the Warrens become intertwined.
Will you like it?
That “eventually” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The Conjuring: Last Rites is two hours and 15 minutes long, and the Warrens’ investigation of the Smurls’ haunting doesn’t even start until the last third.
In the meantime, Chaves cuts back and forth between the two families’ storylines, only one of which is consistently scary. As homemaker Janet Smurl, Rebecca Calder combines delicacy with grim determination, and we feel for her as the supernatural starts disrupting her daily routine. The film’s two best moments involve phenomena that are just slightly off in the Smurl household, making clever use of 20th-century artifacts such as a phone cord and a John Wayne poster.
With their crack timing and strategic use of silence, these scenes recall the halcyon days of the first Conjuring. The Smurls’ home has fine grubby production design, and conflict appears to be brewing in the relationship between volatile Heather and her older sister (Beau Gadsdon).
None of these Smurl story threads actually leads anywhere, however, because the filmmakers are more interested in Warren family fan fiction. An unconscionable amount of screen time goes to Ed’s struggle to reconcile himself to his grown daughter’s serious beau (Ben Hardy) in scenes that feel more Hallmark than horror.
Wilson and Farmiga have always made their characters warm and believable as a squeaky-clean couple, but the filmmakers may have overestimated viewers’ affection for the fictionalized Warrens. Just because we want them to guide us through haunted houses doesn’t mean we also want to hang out at their backyard barbecue. At least when Judy goes wedding dress shopping, she lands in a room with, you guessed it, a lot of mirrors.
When the storylines finally converge, we remember what we liked about this franchise. A simple shot of Lorraine vibing with the Smurl home’s troubled spirits has an ominous eloquence, while a scene of Ed flipping pancakes for the afflicted family offers jaunty retro charm (“Sometimes I make waffles,” he notes). This is how we want to imagine the Warrens: facing down the gaping maw of the vast unknown with big breakfasts and midcentury chipperness.
Given the major role that Judy and her fiancé play in the story, the younger couple seems likely to take up the demonologist mantle in future installments. And that’s a problem, because they lack Wilson and Farmiga’s chemistry and charisma. While one can’t fault The Conjuring: Last Rites for trying a new direction, the scares it conjures are few and far between.
If you like this, try…
The Conjuring (2013; AMC+, HBO Max, YouTube Primetime, rentable): Loosely based on a 1970 case, the franchise starter benefits from director Wan’s artful timing, which turns a routine haunting tale into a thrill ride.
Oculus (2013; Kanopy, PLEX, Prime Video, rentable): Before Mike Flanagan made it big with his twists on classic horror literature for Netflix, he directed a haunted mirror movie that’s actually frightening. Contrasting it favorably to The Conjuring, Kisonak called it “the most smartly made, conceptually inventive supernatural thriller in years.”
Presence (2024; Disney+, Hulu, Kanopy, rentable): I’ve always wanted a haunting story told from the haunt’s point of view, imagining a logic behind the supernatural manifestations in these movies. While neither as scary nor as satirical as I’d like, Steven Soderbergh’s thriller is a smart take on that premise.
This article appears in Sep 10-16 2025.
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