The first Conjuring, released in 2013, was a profitable hangover from the previous decade’s Omen, Amityville and Exorcist retreads, goosing 21st-century audiences with things-going-bump-in-the-night tricks copped from comparable 1970s theatrical and TV movies. Yet despite sequels that went big (2016’s The Conjuring 2, converting the Enfield poltergeist saga into a 4DX-ready theme-park ride) and then sideways (2021’s true crime-adjacent The Devil Made Me Do It), the series’ underlying mechanics have proved stubbornly resistant to change. The current multifaceted horror renaissance makes this an apt moment for the franchise to exit stage right; facing these upstart punks, the generally sluggish Last Rites presents as something akin to dad-rock horror, doing with jump-scares what Status Quo used to do with power chords.
One selling point – that these films are character- rather than carnage-driven – now seems to be a liability. After a nicely cast prologue describing their days as young parents, Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) are reintroduced in 1986, when the film positions these middle-aged squares as yesterday’s exorcists, heckled by students who would rather talk Ghostbusters, in the way today’s cinemagoers will emerge discussing Weapons or Sinners. They head for a Pennsylvanian household whose antique mirror doubles as a portal to hell, but there are 75 minutes of beigey soap before the usual satanic hokey-cokey kicks off, forcing us to consider the threat Armageddon poses to the forthcoming nuptials of the Warrens’ daughter Judy (Mia Tomlinson).
