The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025)

The Conjuring: Last Rites Movie Review - Good, but Overstaying the Farwell

Bear Hands (author)

Hubby Bear

There has always been something endearingly earnest about The Conjuring films — a franchise built on the idea that a devoted married couple can banish demons through a cocktail of Catholicism, compassion, and Lorraine’s patented “I sense something malevolent” gaze. The Conjuring: Last Rites arrives cloaked in the familiar trappings: a distressed family, a cursed object, and the Warrens once again throwing their bodies into the grinding gears of supernatural melodrama. But where earlier entries managed to balance dread with emotional sincerity, Last Rites feels more like an overlong goodbye party where the hosts keep reminding you they’re leaving… except they aren’t.

The film’s emotional core seems less interested in the case at hand and more concerned with bidding the Warrens a wistful, lovingly lit farewell — a marketing choice that, at this point in contemporary franchising, borders on performance art. One cannot help but wonder if “last” in the title exists solely to trigger a reflexive tug at the audience’s heartstrings. Much like many modern franchises, The Conjuring has stumbled into the cultural expectation that nothing truly ends as long as the numbers remain favorable. The result is a narrative that gestures toward finality while clearly keeping a back door propped open for the accountants.

And then there is the mirror. Oh, the mirror. In what I assume was meant to be a harrowing centerpiece, our beloved Warrens find themselves doing battle with a possessed looking glass that spins midair with the menace of an angry ceiling fan. This sequence — unintentionally comedic, stubbornly prolonged — manages to collapse the gravitas the film so deeply craves. One imagines the poor object whirling furiously as if protesting its own inclusion. Whatever evil presence was meant to reside within it is eclipsed entirely by the viewer’s dawning realization that we have reached the point in the franchise where furniture choreography is the new frontier of horror.

It must be said, and fairly so, that the Conjuring franchise is made up of mainly good films. Mainly. They’ve earned their reputation and their audience, and they’ve certainly earned the right to produce the occasional misstep. Last Rites, unfortunately, feels like the filmmakers taking that opportunity with both hands. Instead of tightening the narrative or offering fresh terror, the film leans heavily on sentimentality and repetition — not offensive, but certainly uninspired.

By the time the credits roll, one feels less frightened than gently worn down. The Conjuring: Last Rites is not a disaster, but it is unmistakably a symptom of the modern studio system: endless continuations, false farewells, and emotional beats arranged with all the subtlety of a ghost rattling chains. If this truly is the final chapter, then the Warrens deserved a more dignified curtain call. If it isn’t, then the title is simply the latest in a long tradition of cinematic sleight-of-hand. After all, in contemporary Hollywood, nothing stays dead — not demons, not mirrors, and certainly not franchises.