The Conjuring: Last Rites - I hope it's the last.

Josh
Oct 13, 2025
5 min read

Michael Chaves (2025)

They did their best to make a mirror scary.

Is this the end of The Conjuring franchise? Eh, hopefully at least the Ed or Lorraine saga. I can only hope, which is a sad commentary on a franchise that had some potential. They're crowd pleasers done with creativity. James Wan’s first entry had the perfect balance of style and fun set pieces while being “believable” within the world. In the first movie, the most insane thing that happened was a chair flipped upside down during an exorcism. On par with Regan floating in mid-air in The Exorcist (1973). Then it all went downhill from there. However, visually and set-piece-wise, The Conjuring 2 was entertaining enough, but it went too far. The simple basement exorcism turned into a battle with a demonic nun, with people and objects flying around the room. Only to then be slapped with some real-life pictures of the people involved. Almost as a middle finger to the audience, like, “Ha, almost had you believing this was real, dumb ass”. Last Rites is a muddled, confused, unfocused series of mini-family dramas that feel like they were pulled from different movies. If they were separate movies, they could’ve worked. However, it felt like a battle between which one wanted to be the B story. Then followed by a middle finger to the face, saying, “Yeah, this was meant to be based on something real, idiot”.

*The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025), courtesy of Warner Bros.*

Each of these movies opens with an introduction to the Warrens via a case. Which, honestly, have always been the most believable parts about these movies. Whether it's the simplicity of Annabelle or exploring the aftermath of the Amityville Horror. This one opens as a little prequel to the events of the movie with young Ed (Orion Smith) and pregnant Lorraine (Madison Lawlor), noping the fuck out of a situation they don't even wanna deal with. Followed by the birth of their daughter, a stillborn, in which they pray over to bring her back. This whole scene was just grim. Not in a, I'm sad because it's a stillborn way, but in a, let's hurry up through this because I've seen this scene done a million times. It was so dark that I could barely see anything after the hospital lost power without backup generators. I'm pretty sure they became a standard by the 1950s. It's one of those birth scenes where you get deja vu watching it. You've seen it all before, except this is very dark and claustrophobic, so you feel like you're about to have an unintentional panic attack.

Then we hit my biggest issue. We have an introduction to our haunted family, the Smurls, made up of 8 members, in which the camera follows them one after another throughout the house in a one shot. And if this is the first Conjuring movie you've seen, you would think it's pretty cool. But we did this in the first one. Call it a homage, but it just made me wish I was watching something by James Wan with a little more style. Looking back, it stood out as a sore thumb as feeling out of place compared to the rest of the visual style. Everything else just feels flat, with a camera that moves with no life. But that isn't my issue. It's the family that's the issue.

So all the Conjuring movies revolve around a family getting haunted, with the Warrens fighting their own demons as a sub-plot. In the Last Rites, the Warrens' issues were the core focus. How do you let go and pass on a legacy like this when faith is disappearing? This is briefly touched on in the beginning, showing the ever-changing times to sneak in a reminder that Annabelle exists. Which could've been an interesting angle to take; in fact, that should've been the focus. But their personal drama is more focused on their daughter trying to move towards a normal life with the weight and gift of talking to the dead. And it's not like this is a bad thing. But the movie forgets about our haunted family for a decent chunk of the movie. It doesn't help that this has some extremely surface-level exploration of the themes. We get some extremely basic dialogue as you beg for the information to be presented differently, rather than hearing the awkwardly placed line, “Dad, come on, we've been dating for 6 months now”.

It never felt like I had someone I was meant to be worried about or to root for. The family was underdeveloped and was barely a focus aside from one of the teenage daughters (Beau Gadsdon; Kíla Lord Cassidy). So much so, when it switched back to them as the Warrens, I thought, “Oh yeah, did they solve their ghost problem yet?”

Quick side tangent on the topic of clichéd movie lines. As the family pleads for help, the message doesn’t first hit the Warrens but Father Gordon (Steve Coulter). He investigates the property and dies. Attending the funeral, Lorraine gives a eulogy starting with the lines, “He was a… good man”. If I hear another funeral scene start with the lines, “So-and-so was a good man/woman”, I’m going to scream. If my eulogy starts with, “1080p was a good man”, I’m going to give that person a heart attack with ghost powers.

Also spoilers, I guess, even though you know exactly where this is going. It basically ends with a “it's about family and that's what's so powerful about it”, ending as the Warrens use all their family ghost-fighting powers to defeat a mirror.

Which isn't a very scary thing to have your horror come from, and believe it or not, that is a mild issue in a horror movie. Every other set piece that we have throughout the movie feels like something that was thought of outside of the script. Like a Marvel movie action scene, the just scare moment was created and then shoehorned into the plot, as I can picture those moments clearly but everything that strings them together has left my brain. There is one horror moment that truly stood out, maybe not in the way it was intended. Not in a gutural, I’m squirming in my seat type way but in an Evil Dead over the top way. An ungodly amount of blood fountains out of a girl's mouth.

If you're invested in the Conjuring universe, you may find this to be a satisfying ending to the Warrens. With an ending so sappy it would make Steven Spielberg blush, it sets up a continued story with Judy and Tony taking charge. Literally handing the keys of their work to them. And something that made me laugh, we have a Tony Stark funeral-like ending where characters from their previous cases appear for their wedding. This whole saga is not for me. The potential disappeared early on and the ending was more of a whimper than a bang. As I type this, I'm sure that when it's been published, this whole movie will've left my mind.