The Conjuring: Last Rites

I walked into the theater for The Conjuring: Last Rites with a very specific, slightly distracting problem: I’d accidentally bought a bag of popcorn that was roughly 40% unpopped kernels. Spending the first twenty minutes of a supernatural horror finale trying to avoid breaking a molar on a "widow-maker" kernel really adds a different kind of tension to the viewing experience. But, much like my snack choice, the ninth entry in the Conjuring Universe (if you’re counting the spin-offs, which I am) is a mix of hard-to-swallow franchise tropes and satisfyingly salty payoffs.

By now, we know the drill. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga step back into the high-waisted trousers and Victorian lace of Ed and Lorraine Warren like they’re slipping into a pair of favorite slippers. It’s 2025, and while the rest of the cinematic landscape is obsessed with multiverse collapses and AI-generated superhero sludge, there is something deeply comforting about watching two people who genuinely love each other fight a closet-dwelling entity with a Bible and a tape recorder.

The Smurl of It All

This time around, we’re tackling the Smurl haunting—a real-life 1980s case involving a Pennsylvania family plagued by a "demon-infested" house. Michael Chaves, who previously directed The Curse of La Llorona and the third Conjuring flick, returns to the director's chair. Chaves has always felt like a steady hand rather than a visionary like James Wan, but here he seems to have finally found his groove. He trades some of the previous film’s courtroom-drama fluff for a return to the "haunted house" basics that made the 2013 original a modern classic.

The Smurl family is played with a frantic, exhausted energy by Rebecca Calder and Tilly Walker. They look like people who haven’t slept since the Reagan administration, which makes the stakes feel heavier. When the entity finally makes its presence known—not through a CGI explosion, but through the slow, agonizing movement of a heavy dresser—it reminded me that modern horror still works best when it relies on physics rather than pixels.

Passing the Holy Water

What’s most interesting about Last Rites is how it engages with the "legacy sequel" trend without feeling entirely cynical. We see more of Judy Warren, now played by Mia Tomlinson, who is clearly being positioned to carry the torch. The chemistry between her and Ben Hardy (playing Tony Spera) provides a youthful counterbalance to the Warrens’ "we’re getting too old for this exorcism" energy.

The film does occasionally trip over its own lore. There are nods to the Annabelle films and The Nun that feel like mandatory corporate "homework" rather than organic storytelling. In an era where every movie is trying to build a "universe," I find myself longing for a story that is content to just be a scary ninety minutes. At 136 minutes, Last Rites is definitely feeling the bloat of a "Grand Finale." There’s a subplot involving a skeptical priest that could have been excised entirely without losing an ounce of dread.

However, the tech side is impressive. Eli Born’s cinematography uses the darkness of the Smurl house to perfection, and Benjamin Wallfisch’s score is a jagged, unsettling thing that knows exactly when to lean into silence. There’s a specific sequence involving a laundry chute that is a genuine contender for the most stressful five minutes of 2025 cinema, proving that Chaves can still squeeze blood from the stone of tired horror tropes.

The $500 Million Exorcism

The financial context of this film is hard to ignore. With a $55 million budget and a nearly $500 million global haul, it’s a massive win for New Line Cinema. In a post-pandemic world where mid-budget movies often die on the vine or get relegated to a "Content Row" on a streaming app, the Conjuring films remain the ultimate theatrical survivors. People still want to sit in a dark room with three hundred strangers and scream at a jump scare. It’s our modern communal campfire.

The Warrens are the closest thing we have to a healthy marriage on screen, and it takes a literal demon to prove it. Their relationship is the secret sauce of this franchise. Without Farmiga’s soulful, wide-eyed intensity and Wilson’s "dad-joke-meets-exorcist" charisma, this would just be another series about loud noises in the dark. They ground the supernatural in the emotional, and even when the script gets a bit goofy (and it does), you believe in them.

While it doesn’t quite reclaim the lightning-in-a-bottle perfection of the 2013 original, The Conjuring: Last Rites is a dignified, genuinely spooky curtain call for Ed and Lorraine. It manages to balance the franchise's commercial obligations with a story that feels personal and surprisingly final. If this really is the case that ends it all, the Warrens are going out with their crosses held high and their legacy intact. Just maybe check your popcorn for unpopped kernels before the lights go down—you’ll need all your teeth for the ending.