Say Goodbye Together with "The Conjuring: Last Rites"

by Nick Taylor

After twelve years, the main branch of The Conjuring film series has seemingly closed its doors. Whether we get any more Annabelles or The Nuns or a subsequent cash-grab inspired by the success of The Conjuring: Last Rites is a different story entirely, and I’ll wait a few years before I truly believe James Wan’s claims about this really being the end. But as a send-off to cinema’s own Ed and Lorraine Warren, there’s plenty of affecting work to admire within some godawful cinematography and a villain that’s never very compelling on its own terms.

We begin The Conjuring: Last Rites in 1964, as Ed and Lorraine (Orion Smith and Madison Lawlor) begin recording statements for their first-ever case. They’re investigating the haunted goings-on at a curiosity shop, where according to the shop’s assistant, there’s been an uptick in inexplicable paranormal activity since the owner inexplicably killed himself . . . .

While Ed questions the shop’s assistant further, Lorraine sets off to check the inventory for any obviously suspicious knick-knacks. One complication: Lorraine is pregnant with their first child, and looks as though she could give birth at any moment. So when she comes across a floor-length mirror with an ornate frame and a demonic entity claiming squatter’s rights, you bet your ass it inflicts a series of horrific visions upon Lorraine which induces labor. Despite rushing to a hospital, the baby seemingly dies during childbirth for a full minute, until she suddenly starts crying in her mother’s arms. Lorraine names the baby Judy, and they all lived happily ever after.

Back in the present day of 1986 Connecticut, Ed and Lorraine (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) have functionally retired from ghost hunting, and have redirected their time towards collegiate lecture tours and writing a book. More importantly, they’ve stopped for health reasons, namely Ed’s bad heart, but he prefers to keep that information between them. The Warrens are simply older people now, and though sometimes they clearly miss their old lives and the work they achieved, they’re so happy to be spending every day together. 

Meanwhile, the Smurl family in Pittston, Pennsylvania are celebrating the confirmation of their daughter Heather (Kila Lord Casidy). Her grandparents have gifted her a creepy, floor-length mirror which eagle-eyed viewers will recognize from several minutes agoo. In no time at all, there’s yanking at phone cords by unseen hands and kids spontaneously vomiting glass. This latter example is actually upsetting to watch, in part because it’s not as heavily telegraphed as most of the scares preceding it. More often than not, director Michael Chaves has good instincts for when to dilate the suspense of a scene past the breaking point, but The Conjuring’s template of scare tactics is too ossified to make these scares meaningfully linger.

But if you like heavy, repetitively structured scares, you’ll be excited to spend time with a now grown-up Judy Warren (Mia Tomlinson), who is becoming more vulnerable to the same spiritual visions that plague her mother with each passing day. Her safeguards are failing her, even as much else in her life trends towards happiness and fulfilment. Worse, the scenes of Judy being tormented are the most prolonged of any character in Last Rites, or maybe they’re so easy to predict they just feel longer than the setpieces in the Smurl house. It gets to the point where she becomes less credible as a character for being so easy to lure despite the tutelage of her ghost-hunter parents.

Let me get my one major caveat out of the way: The cinematography is terrible, but I honestly can't say whether this was an issue with the film or the theater’s projector. The color grading looked so much worse than it did in the official Warner Bros. trailer, to the point where well-lit scenes were out of place with the sludgy, ugly whole. Is this an experience others had watching Last Rites? It got to the point where most of the activities in the Smurl house were nearly impossible to see. Jump scares were kneecapped. Faces were sometimes as hard to see here as in Soderbergh's Presence. Were the ghosts afraid of running up the light bill, or was it my local theater? All I know is the natty ‘80s production design and sturdy performances from the Smurl’s actors were frequently illegible. Camera movements and framing are always legible as artistic choices in the own right, but several close-ups of Farmiga are undone by bad lighting. So maybe the problem is my eyes and my shoddy cinema, and I’ll withhold my harsher diatribe until I get a second look-see.

What works in The Conjuring: Last Rites - unambiguously so - are the elements that have served as a strong spine throughout the entirety of this series. The sound design is as pushy and skin-crawling as ever, never aiming for subtlety but still packed with scene-specific scares and nuances. Lorraine’s costumes are such a delicate blend of hard colors or patterns hemmed with the finest embroidery you’ve ever seen on a ghost hunter. It’s easy eye-candy, especially with those frills on her neck, but it remains endlessly fascinating to see Lorraine’s fashion sense (vampire Katharine Hepburn?) thrive in all situations, be it a professional outing or a loved one’s funeral.

Even better is the chemistry between Wilson and Farmiga, who have only deepened and improved upon the unexpectedly solid character work they brought in 2013. You really believe their love, not as a thing they’re constantly proving to each other or to the audience, but a fact of life, buried deep in their bones. Whatever faults I have with Judy’s character as written, Tomlinson ingratiates herself into the dynamic Wilson and Farmiga have cultivated over the past decade, and their assessments of Ben Hardy’s sweetheart boyfriend are better than you’d expect. The familial bonds between the Warrens and the Smurls have enough potency to carry Last Rites through shoddier passages and a weirdly uninteresting villain.

Farmiga is especially moving, pouring so much complicated history in her response to an unexpected proposal while still offering a laser-focused precision in her eyes and physical carriage. If she’s not the primary reason The Conjuring: Last Rites makes any emotional claims on its audience, she’s certainly the most affecting one. Her gradations of terror are the best conduit for audience identification across this entire franchise, making the moments where Lorraine loses all composure so personal and devastating to watch. Sally Hawkins is rightly being praised for holding Bring Her Back’s shoddy script together, but I hope the horror nuts don’t take Farmiga’s work for granted when it’s time for us to start rallying around names that are never, ever going to get an Oscar nomination but absolutely deserve to.

The Conjuring: Last Rites is a pretty fantastic sendoff for these characters. If you liked Mission: Impossible - Final Reckoning giving every previous speaking role in the franchise at least one loving close-up, you might be a little underwhelmed by the smaller cameos from key players throughout The Conjuring series. Still, giving Ed and Lorraine (and Wilson and Farmiga) such a tender goodbye is the right way to conclude this unexpected cultural phenomenon. We wouldn't have any of these films in the first place without their rare charisma, and whether or not you think we should have a Conjuringverse to begin with, this might be just the right way to say goodbye.

The Conjuring: Last Rites is currently in wide release.

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