Bring Her Back. Sinners. Weapons. Horror is having a banner year. These new voices and daring visions are pushing the genre into strange, exhilarating corners. Then along comes The Conjuring: Last Rites, a film so limp it feels less like a finale than an obligation.
This is horror drained of purpose and pulse. My credit card statements are scarier than anything Michael Chaves manages to stage. At least those have suspense.
The premise has potential. A cursed mirror that nearly killed Judy Warren (Mia Tomlinson) at birth resurfaces decades later, tormenting the Smurl family in Pennsylvania. That could have been a chilling way to tie the Warrens’ past to one final case. Instead, the film wanders in circles, padded with half-hearted melodrama until the Warrens finally decide to do the thing we all know they’ll do. By that point, the tension hangs in the air, but I’ve long stopped giving a fuck. Suspense here suffocates under a runtime that punishes rather than entertains.
When the “scares” arrive, they play like reheated leftovers. The cycle repeats until it becomes numbing. Chaves throws everything at the screen, yet the tension never bites. James Wan, who directed the first two films, understood that horror thrives on restraint. Under Chaves, the series is like fireworks that fizzle before they can ignite.
Even the family material, meant to carry emotional weight, plays with the flatness of a soap opera. Judy, now grown and newly engaged, should have been the spark to give this finale urgency. Instead, her subplot is buried in cliché, dropped awkwardly between hollow jump scares and syrupy speeches. The film cannot decide whether it wants to be a horror story or a sentimental send-off, and by trying to be both, it manages to be neither.
The Smurl haunting, meant to be the central case, barely leaves an impression. Characters levitate and scream, and the film treats it all with the enthusiasm of someone checking items off a list.
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are the only reason the film is not completely unwatchable. As Ed and Lorraine Warren, they pull off a marriage that’s absurdly convincing for how obviously scripted it is, and they bring a sincerity that almost convinces you to care. Yet their performances cannot disguise how lifeless the rest of the movie has become.
There was a time when The Conjuring felt like an exorcism of mainstream horror’s worst habits. This saga began as a door creaking open. But Last Rites slams it shut and locks it from the inside, as if it knows I’m never coming back. Honestly? I’m so done with this franchise. Fortunately, Ed and Lorraine’s story is too. — WALPHS.com