From relatively humble horror beginnings, The Conjuring Universe – as it was so dubbed the more sequels it garnered – is coming to a close after over a decade of mixed scares and box office bullion.
And whilst The Conjuring: Last Rites, the ninth installment in the franchise overall (following the previous three Conjuring films, a trio of Annabelle offerings, and two features centred around The Nun), isn’t exactly ending the series with a bang, it’s serviceably following suit with its sense of emotion and well executed scares.
The series has always enjoyed adding a layer of extra terror to proceedings as each film claims to be “Based on true events”, and for Last Rites, paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) experience their most personal yet, with their daughter, Judy (Mia Tomlinson), the target of a ghostly presence. Given how many years Ed and Lorraine have been fending off evil spirits, it makes sense that the otherworld would want to hit them where it hurts, and because Judy is all too aware of what her parents have had to contend with, screenplay writers Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick waste no time in setting up the premise.
That also goes for the film’s B-side plot, which sees Ed and Lorraine – before it becomes evident what Judy is dealing with – take on the case of the Smurl family (headed by Rebecca Calder and Elliot Cowan), a loving, extended clan who are gifted an extravagant mirror from their grandparents (Peter Wight and Kate Fahy) which, wouldn’t you know it, happens to be something of a conduit for a nasty, vengeful spirit. There is almost a “demon of the week” mentality that The Conjuring films have adopted over the course of their inception, and we’ve seen from these films that there’s only so much that can be done with that, but kudos to director Michael Chaves (no stranger to the series, having helmed the previous Conjuring sequel, The Devil Made Me Do It, and The Nun II) for managing to set up a neat selection of scares – both gradual and of the jump variety – to keep Last Rites from feeling redundant.
Judy already suffers from visceral hallucinations – an effect from the trauma surrounding her birth – but she’s determined to live a “normal” life with her ex-cop beau (Ben Hardy), who, like Judy, is a sweet-natured being who clearly has no qualms about marrying into the spookiness of the family; ironically, the scariest presence he has to contend with is Ed. The film’s dramatic temperament around Judy and the Warrens ties itself into the predicament of the Smurls, allowing Last Rites to fuse the strands together in the predictable climactic showdown where it lightly indulges in its 1980s setting with a certain camp mentality; intentional or not, some of the effects on the demons aren’t overtly crisp, but if you take the film as a genre piece in its 80s era, it’s more forgivable.
Whilst The Conjuring series as a whole has never been able to top the original film, the sequels and numerous spinoffs have all – at some point – served up a set piece or two that somewhat justifies their existence, and Last Rites proves one of the stronger efforts in spite of its flaws. Though it runs over 2 hours (it clocks around 135 minutes), it wastes little time in setting up the Smurl predicament, which does allow Judy’s story to earn some exposition, but runs the risk of the family feeling occasionally like an afterthought. Still, with enjoyable scares and pockets of intentional humour (no, Ed and Lorraine haven’t been slimed like the Ghostbusters), as well as a neat visual reminder of the series players that have come before (cheesy or not, it does make you realise how long this series has been running), Last Rites sends The Conjuring Universe off with a certain calm that the Warrens clearly deserve after a lifetime of alarm.
THREE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
The Conjuring: Last Rites is now screening in Australian theatres, before opening in the United States on September 5th.
