The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025)

The Conjuring series is a mixed series. They have ranged from ok (the first one) to boring (the second one). I am sceptical that this is the last one but it will most likely be the last one to feature Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. The plot is pretty much the same as the rest, the ‘true story’ sees. The ‘true story’ sees Lorraine and Ed travel to the house of some family that has a possession in it. I should probably have watched the previous films because I had forgotten/wasn't aware that the Warrens had a daughter and she forms the basis for the story and the fact she gets married to a guy who was once in Eastenders.

The true part of this story is absolute nonsense. Just because the Warren’s say it happened or some of it happened means that it almost certainly didn’t happen but that is something that could be said about anything happening in the Conjuring Universe. The Annabelle doll for example is just a Raggedy Anne doll and not in the slightest bit scary.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. It’s not a great film by any means but compared to the usual conveyor belt of jump horror films that Blumhouse are famous for, this is one of the better ones. It doesn't quite have the same jump scares (that i can remember) which is one of the things that make it worth watching. There are some good shots that show some thought was put into making this film atmospheric. The way that the camera slowly zooms in on someone shows that the director was more interested in making a film that didn’t just rely on jump scares. The Nun, which was a Michael Chaves is one of the most boring films in the Conjuring series but this is miles better. The story is good, the scares are decent and the family is mildly interesting. Interesting enough to care about them getting through this situation. 

There did seem to be a couple of moments which were hilarious even though I don’t think they were meant to be. One moment occurred when the daughter started vomiting blood and the aimless stream made me chuckle.

I was worried that at 2 hours and 15 minutes, the film was going to struggle to keep the pace going and whilst it took a while to get to the Warrens at the family house, I thought the run time was just right. They got away with it. Horror films should be 90-100 minutes and if you go longer then you run the risk of being boring but to this films credit, they got away with it. If this is the final one then they ended on a high because they saved the best till last. It’s nowhere near as good as Bring Her Back or Sinners because it doesn’t have the quality in terms of story or acting but I think that it does what it needed to do and in that sense does it better than films like I know what you did Last Summer.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

The Conjuring is an interesting series. The spin offs range from ok to dull with The Curse of La Llarona being one of the worst (equal to The Nun) and yet the third Conjuring film (or eighth in the Conjuring universe) is directed by the guy who directed one of the dullest horror films of recent years. The scroll at the beginning says that the film was based on a true story. I would say the more accurate is ‘loosely based on a true story’ because the actual true story is that Arne Cheyenne Johnson killed his landlord but it became the first case in the US where the defendant denied responsibility on the grounds of being possessed by a demon at the time. 

The central performances from Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are solid and have perhaps been the best thing of the Conjuring movies. Farmiga has to do the majority of the work here and she does really well with it. The supporting performances are all good with Ruairi O’Connor (Arne) and Sarah Catherine Hook (Debbie Glatzel) doing enough to stand out. It was a surprise to see John Noble pop up for a role where he was clearly up to something.

The second half of the film remembers that it's a Conjuring film and so does the things that you would expect from that type of film and it was this half that I found more interesting. It felt more like what I would expect from a Conjuring film. By that I mean that the suspension of disbelief gets stretched to breaking point. It comes after Lorraine discovers a body that had been missing for months. I did find myself asking a question of how it managed to stay undetected after the police would have done a big search in that area. They did manage to get round that with a plausible line but the body itself didn't look like it had been in the water for a few months. Bodies normally get bloated after prolonged time in the water yet in the film it looked a bit rotted but that was it. Things continue the credibility stretch but you dont watch the Conjuring films for the gritty realism.

This is a better film than La Llarona but that was never going to be difficult to achieve. It’s not the best of the Conjuring films either but I do give it points for at least attempting to do something different. I think if James Wan had been directing this then there might have been a bit more energy to it. The film didn't rely on jump scares as much as I was expecting which was perhaps the biggest surprise but this cost.