THE CONJURING: LAST RITES - Mark Reviews Movies

The Conjuring: Last Rites, Warner Bros. Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 5, 2025

As a supposedly final entry, The Conjuring: Last Rites proves to have some unexpected tricks to play. The biggest surprise is that none of them have to do with trying to scare us.

Indeed, the prologue here, which follows the pattern of both the previous installments and horror movies in general these days, offers a bit of a bait-and-switch. We once again meet our clairvoyant and demonologist protagonists in the early years of investigating supernatural claims. It's the 1960s, and the married couple, a couple decades younger than in the main story, seem set to face off against a potentially demonic presence inside a haunted mirror that has resulted in at least one suicide and its current owner's deteriorating mental state.

Instead, the screenplay—penned by returning screenwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (who wrote the minor misstep that was the previous movie) along with mainline series newcomers Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing—stops before any of that can happen. It throws us into a familial and medical crisis that turns out to be surprisingly moving and becomes the emotional throughline of the rest of the film. That is when it isn't trying to frighten us with ghosts and demons and visions of doom, of course.

Family has been a running theme through this series, whether that be the genuine love between Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) and Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson), the focus on how the better films' haunted-house scenarios put a strain on a family's previously happy dynamic, or the way our spectral detectives will drop everything and anything whenever some kind of threat comes home to terrorize their daughter. Judy (Mia Tomlinson), that daughter, is now an adult and has met a nice young man who loves her, too. Just as with that opening sequence, it's genuinely surprising how poignant it is when Ed tells his daughter's boyfriend how he still sees her—and probably always will.

All of this is to say that the film, directed by Michael Chaves (who also returns from third movie), may be an obvious return to the haunted-house premise of the first two entries and generally succeed in that way. However, it mainly works because the film rightly assumes we've become attached to these characters in some way after more than a decade, three previous entries (four, if one counts how a sequel about a haunted doll was also a stealthy sequel to the Warren-focused movies), and how well Farmiga and Wilson have grounded characters who could have been the setup to a joke.

Once again promising upfront to be one of the most important cases the couple had ever worked on (In retrospect, it would have been interesting, just once, to see them on a routine or even phony case), the story here eventually revolves around a haunting in suburban Pittsburgh home. The Smurl family begins experiencing terrifying things after the Confirmation rite of daughter Heather (Kíla Lord Cassidy), when her unsuspecting grandparents buy her a familiar-looking mirror as a gift.

Yes, it's the mirror from the prologue, and yes, the other Smurl kids and their parents (played by Elliot Cowan and Rebecca Calder) start seeing scary ghosts and experiencing physically inexplicable phenomena. The specters in this installment never rise to memorable cavalcade of spooky figures in the second film, but a crone with an oversized smile definitely earns several shudders whenever she suddenly appears in frame.

The Smurls' story plays out in the background for maybe more than half the movie, which would seem an odd choice, until it becomes apparent that the filmmakers actually care about catching us up with the Warrens and setting up the personal stakes for the family when they finally do intervene for the Pittsburgh clan. It's 1986, and Ed's heart condition has led to his and Lorraine's early retirement from dealing with ghosts and demons, leading the couple to do lectures for diminishing and more skeptically sarcastic audiences.

That's fine by them, because it means more time with Judy, whose own lifelong visions of supernatural entities are becoming stronger and affecting her, and to get to know her beau Tony (Ben Hardy), a former cop. The guy seems good and is smart enough to know not to ask Ed and Lorraine too many questions about their old career together. His knowledge of the existence of a room filled with haunted and cursed items is more than enough for now.

The screenplay takes its time and gives these characters some room to breathe, with only minimal visions from Lorraine and Judy, a few hints from old friend and colleague Fr. Gordon (Steve Coulter) that people have been asking for the Warrens' aid, and those occasional reminders that there's a haunted mirror in the suburbs of Pittsburgh causing problems for a stymied family. After directing three pervious installments in this franchise, Chaves has honed his scare-tactic technique and stages a few decent ones here—notably a bit involving a VCR and passing headlights leading our view, another in the waiting room of a bishop's office with both a foreboding door handle and electrical cord, and extended climax in which everyone tries to figure out what to do with that damned mirror.

More than previously, though, Lorraine, Ed, and, now, Judy seem to matter beyond their ghost-finding and demon-expelling skills. The Conjuring: Last Rites gives the Warrens a worthy farewell, both scary and sincerely felt (At the risk of becoming repetitive, the epilogue, too, is, surprisingly, quite touching), and if the film is also suggesting a next-generation iteration of more stories, this isn't a terrible start to that concept, either.

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