‘The Conjuring: Last Rites’ Review – Emotional Franchise Finale Fails To Summon Scares

All the intangibles are here: long-tenured, lovable main characters, scenes and sets dripping in perceived tension, and source material rife with storytelling and scare potential. Yet The Conjuring: Last Rites feels like a spoof of the franchise’s best work. What’s missing?

Well, in addition to James Wan, the answer is soul, ironically enough. To be purported as a cumulative franchise finale – fitted with cameos and easter eggs galore – there’s an odd lack of reverence in the fourth Conjuring installment. Sure, the Warrens’ well-deserved send-off, fit with two expectedly incredible performances from Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, is a suitable enough treatment for two characters who have defined both this franchise and, to an extent, the genre in the last decade.

But Last Rites, in trying to drum up a nonexistent conflict following the third movie’s already teetering central clash, betrays its two leads on multiple occasions in favor of contrived story beats and new, weightless characters. The Warrens’ daughter Judy, played nicely by Mia Tomlinson, is at the center of this story as, for the first time, a grown adult.

This is not necessarily a bad idea, especially given the film’s intriguing attempts to tie her own budding abilities to Lorraine’s infamous uses in prior outings. But where the film seriously flounders is in how it attempts to set her character apart from her parents; she essentially becomes them towards the film’s inconceivable finale. Not only does her character feel unoriginal as a result, but in order for her journey to be tied home, the Warrens are, in a way, sabotaged. They feel far too unfamiliar at times in their fourth installment, and while it isn’t bad to expand the stage, essentially rewriting their trademark motivations just to do so is not the way to go about it.

It also doesn’t help that Last Rites simply isn’t all that scary. Some folks have begun to hail this as a sort of horror/drama combination, with the 135-minute runtime being largely devoted to familial conflict and development. That may have been the intention, but when you’re following up three diehard horror movies, switching your tone on the audience is a painfully jarring decision.

The best of the spooks here is what has become expected of director Michael Chaves; he does a magnificent job grounding more subtle, slow-burning scares in the environment around characters. Phone lines hanging on seemingly nothing in pitch black darkness and posters appearing to take on lively eyes are two terrific uses of such a formula here.

But Chaves, in increasingly worrying fashion, also commits himself to a pointless reliance on garish special effects. This trend began mildly in his overall efficient work on The Nun 2, but here, when the stakes are at their highest, he really breaks the scale.

This is made worse by how good the sets and general production most often are. You’ll have a scene begin to build up – music swells, lights dim – bringing you right to the climax of a potentially moving scare, and… you’re met with a flat, narratively useless, computer-generated ghoul whose appearance is almost like a sticker plastered onto the frame. Unmoving and not remotely dynamic. For every decent spook (there are a few; specific shoutout to the TV scene), there are two underwhelming ones.

Still, going into the final act, Last Rites carries enough good graces to bring the entire thing home, until it turns and makes by far and away the most boggling string of decisions to that point yet. Chaves and company, in the last thirty minutes, trade everything recognizable and reliable about these movies up to this point in favor of genre conventions that consistently underscore the worst efforts in modern horror.

The franchise’s usual “reveal the evil” situation is replaced by generic, familial themes that are practically shouted at the audience, and used literally to gain victory over the force opposing them. Gone are traditional exorcisms and compelling, lore-built adversaries. Here instead is a finale that you’ve seen hundreds of times before, only now, it’s being used to farewell two of the most influential characters the horror genre has ever seen. A real pity.

The Conjuring: Last Rites is a slow-burn with too few effective scares. The franchise’s go-to “haunted family” dynamic is reduced essentially to ashes, leaving scrambled emotional beats and underdeveloped, sporadic exposition in the wake. Put this thing in the Warrens’ artifact room and pretend it doesn’t exist.

The Conjuring: Last Rites is currently playing exclusively in theaters courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.