Critics have described this movie as a “spooky, creepy, unwaveringly unnerving fright fest”. Early reactions to the movie on social media highlight its scary and emotional nature. Some are even calling it the best and scariest installment in the franchise. The Conjuring: Last Rites delivers another chapter of the Conjuring cinematic universe on September 5th. At early screenings of The Conjuring: Last Rites, a priest is present to bless the audience and distribute a small bottle labeled “Holy Water”. This is an excellent way to market the movie, as many people watch The Conjuring series for its use of jump scares and the ability to have you on the edge of your seat. The film reunites Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga to portray the well-known paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren. The runtime for the movie is 2 hours and 15 minutes. This movie will be the last chapter of the Conjuring series, and movie posters say that it is “The Case that Ended it All,” because this was the concluding case for their careers as paranormal investigators.
It follows another real-life case of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. The movie is based on the haunting of the Smurl family in 1986. The attacks that the family allegedly faced were phantom screams, foul odors, and physical attacks. The Smurls contacted the Catholic Church, but due to the lack of evidence, the church dismissed them until Ed and Lorraine Warren investigated. They had found a demonic presence that had been lurking in the house for decades. This case is controversial because some believe the family fabricated the whole thing due to the lack of physical evidence. The movie will delve into the depths of how the hauntings affected both the Warren and Smurl families. There is another movie adaptation, made 34 years before The Conjuring, called “The Haunted,” which supposedly reports the true story of the Smurl family’s hauntings. The Conjuring movies are inaccurate and heavily fictionalized to add a more dramatic narrative, so I do not expect this movie to be entirely accurate to the real case. However, I still expect it to be as sinister and eerie as the other movies in the franchise.
I feel like this movie is the perfect ending for The Conjuring Franchise. Some say that it was not as scary as they expected, but I feel like the jump scares were unexpected and excellent. I enjoyed how the movie went more in-depth on Ed and Lorraine’s daughter, Judy. Judy possesses the same abilities as her mother, Lorrine, and The Conjuring: Last Rites showcases it better than Annabelle Comes Home. The film was closer to the actual Smurl case than I expected. In the movie, three ghosts are terrorizing the family, but something much more eerie and demonic was actually controlling them, which is also the case with the actual Smurl family hauntings. I rewatched all the movies in the franchise before watching this one, and I would say this is in my top 3. Seeing actors from the previous movies coming back for the last film is a nice thing to see. The ending scene was my favorite because I felt like it wrapped up the whole thing in a nice way.