When you decide it’s time to conclude a profitable film series, you want to go out with a bang, right? This explains the advertising campaign for The Conjuring: Last Rites. The series was launched 12 years ago by Australian director James Wan, who also directed the first sequel (and has a story credit here) before handing off to American director Michael Chaves for what appears to be the final two films in the franchise. The campaign for this one talks about how shocking it is and how we will get to see for ourselves why this was the case that ended the careers of real-life psychic investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who have been portrayed in all four films by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga.
Oooh, you wonder. What could it be? Does one of them die? Does one of them engage in some sort of shocking malpractice, within the loose “practice” guidelines of this sort of dubious career? Is the fate of the entire world at stake?
How about a haunted mirror?
Yes, Chaves and screenwriters Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick were obviously constrained by the historical record, at least in terms of what kind of case it was, if not the fantastical, unverifiable details they imagine occurring behind closed doors. But if you are looking for anything more dramatic than just another entry in a series that became increasingly less interesting after Wan ceded the director’s chair to Chaves, you will be sorely disappointed — and it isn’t the only reason you’ll feel that way. This probably isn’t even among the ten best films about haunted mirrors.
Last Rites begins with the news that Ed Warren has heart problems. Actually, before that, it begins with the news that the Warren daughter, Judy (played by Mia Tomlinson as an adult), was born under dire circumstances, driven prematurely from Lorraine’s womb following Lorraine’s interaction with a mysterious mirror bearing the heads of three babies/angels carved atop its wooden frame. Judy appeared to be stillborn, but then after a minute coughed out the usual infant cries after her mother prayed to God to bring the baby back. Thus establishes the necessary religious stakes in any series where God is evoked to ward off demons.
Fast forward 22 years to 1986, and this is when we get Ed’s heart problems following a heart attack, and Judy about to be engaged to her boyrfriend of six months, Tony (Ben Hardy). Ed and Lorraine are a little taken aback by such an early propsosal, for which Tony asks their permission, especially since they still hold Judy so close to the chest after the miraculous circumstances of her birth. But that birth, as well as her parentage on the maternal side, left Judy with the curse of seeing things that weren’t there, which she can try to suppress with a short lullaby incantation Lorraine taught her for that purpose. She’ll need every bit of that when the mirror comes back into their lives, purchased at an op shop by the Smurl family for their daughters Dawn (Beau Gadsdon) and Heather (Kila Lord Cassidy).
Last Rites might not feel like such a tedious use of our time if it had condensed its storytelling. At 2 hours and 15 minutes, the film is not necessarily long by the standards of the series, but it drags out interminably, taking forever to get to a number of uninspired horror tropes involving cracked mirrors, talking dolls and evil old women with ghoulish grins. If the actual story details cannot be sufficiently cataclysmic to conclude the series, at least we might reasonably hope for some broken ground in terms of horror images. That hope goes unrealised.
The actual narrative is repetitive, which also explains why we spend so much time with these characters and yet feel like there is no depth to them. Particularly problematic in that regard is the Smurl family, who occupy enough narrative space that they should have far greater dimension than they do. Because these films are ultimately about the Warrens, each “case of the week” family is lightly drawn, but you really feel that absence of characterisation in this film. The muddy cinematography does not help, as the Smurls really blend into their drab backgrounds. The film promises some good 1980s nostalgia by belting out The Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary” after the year 1986 jumps on screen, but it’s all too muted to register, as everything in this movie is some varying shade of brown.
As Chaves and the screenwriters keeping dropping tinctures of mediocre horror, which repeat previous “scares” rather than increasing stakes, expanding them or taking them in new directions, they run the risk of boring the audience to death. And with the material so flat, the limitations of the Warrens as characters are drawn into focus. Farmiga as Lorraine Warren has particularly worn out her welcome, her buttoned-up Puritanical outfits becoming a metaphor for a character with nothing interesting about her. How many times can we watch her slap the back of her hand to her forehead, crumple to the ground and dart her eyes around the room wildly?
The answer is, no more times. Last Rites seems to definitively conclude the series by a sentimental ending and text about how much longer the Warrens lived and what became of the other real people portrayed here. And so it is we gladly give this series, which has filled a useful role bridging mainstream and prestige horror, its last rites, only wishing it might have gone out more memorably.
The Conjuring: Last Rites is currently playing in cinemas.