Dark histories, tragic deaths, and ghoulish specters slayed by the power of family and faith are the bones of director James Wan’s series “The Conjuring,” which first came to theatres in 2013. “The Conjuring: Last Rites,” the final installment of The Conjuring series, was released in theaters on Sept. 5 and promised to show the case that “ended it all” for the movie’s character versions of real-life supernatural investigators Ed and Lorainne Warren. What is offered instead is a narrative stretched thin and built around hasty and half-hearted concepts better left out entirely if director Michael Chaves wanted to deliver the fearful finale he promised audiences.
Ever since the release of the first “Conjuring” movie, the series reintroduces to big-budget filmmaking the formulaic haunted house story of a family moving into a new home and suffering unforeseen consequences of the dead outliving their welcome. Filled with jump scares, cinematic tension and a story and characters built around family and hope, the Conjuring movies offer scares, tension and meditations on family bonds to audiences.
On the outside, “Last Rites” tries to offer the same, with the movie’s narrative largely focused on the Warren family and their personal struggles of getting older and life moving on. However, despite the sentiment of the movie’s title, last rites are the last thing offered in the final installment of a series that shaped ghost movies for the decade following its initial release.
The story is bloated with an overarching plot shoehorned in and retroactively applied as a through-line to the rest of the movies that had never been referenced prior to “Last Rites.” The Warren’s daughter, Judy, is revealed to have the same clairvoyant ability as her mother in an early ‘twist’ that was handled with a clumsy coyness with a narrative that felt more like lazy writing than narrative intrigue. Where the movie series has historically been decent at balancing show and tell, Last Rites relies almost entirely on tell and some show that never comes to a satisfying conclusion, as Judy Warren is tormented with visions that the audience sees all of twice in the entire movie.
In the previous three Conjuring movies, the focus of the plot is on the Warren’s investigations into a haunting terrorizing a family. As a secondary plot, the Warrens’ personal strife serves as an undertone to highlight their motivations and emotions as they’re trying to help the family in need. In Last Rites, the Smurl family haunting is the primary motivation for the plot and serves as the angle that was so heavily leaned on in advertising. In execution, however, the Smurls feel more like an afterthought with underdeveloped haunting incidents, ghosts that lack distinction or memorability in their design and motivation and emotional payoff to the plot that happens as an afterthought past the climax that doesn’t even feature any member of the Smurl family.
For a final movie of such a long-standing series, “Last Rites” does offer some minor payoff in the form of cameos of characters from previous movies, some minor wrap-up to the Warren’s careers and an ending of hopefulness that the series has always revolved around, unique in its genre. With the series’ typical and expected use of jump scares and lighting, it’s almost easy to forget in the moment that the formula these movies have historically followed is actively being broken before the viewer’s eyes to a diminished effect on the story.
Ultimately, the movie feels like a shell of an idea made of good cinematography and filled with poor pacing, lazy writing and checkboxes haphazardly marked to deem the story finished and sent out the door with as much dignity as a mass grave.
