The Banishing
In an attempt to go out on top, ‘The Conjuring’ series comes to a fitting if fitful conclusion.
the Conjuring: Last Rites
Director: Michael Chaves • Writers: Ian B Goldberg, Richard Naing, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick
Starring: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Mia Tomlinson, Ben Hardy, Steve Coulter
USA • 2hrs 16mins
Opens Hong Kong September 4 • IIB
Grade: C+
If nothing else, The Conjuring: Last Rites feels like The End.
There was potential here for this series to go on and on and on and turn into some kind of horror version of The Fast and the Furious franchise. Returns may not be diminishing quite as hard but the fun certainly is. Now nine films in made up of four The Conjurings, three Annabelles, two The Nuns and The Conjuring-adjacent The Curse of La Llorona (which featured Father Perez from Annabelle), comic books and a potential series for HBO Max. Max. HBO Max. As universes go, The Conjuring is a strong one, and it’s easy to see why it’s been thoroughly milked. The films haven’t made MCU money – US$2.2 billion for all eight so far – but combined they’ve also been made for less than it cost to produce the dreck that turned out to be Thor: Love and Thunder, or Eternals, or the MCU nadir that is Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and the average budget of most Marvel joints.
The last time we were with famed paranormal investigators/religious nuts/hoaxsters (depending on your POV) Lorraine and Ed Warren in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It was the first hint the series was getting close to running on fumes. Director Michael Chaves (who helmed The Nun II) merged demonic haunting with courtroom drama and, strangely, really skimped on the courtroom stuff. I’m the outlier; The Devil Made Me Do It was a hit but it also left its fascinating legal quagmire at the door. What? No courtroom grandstanding or speaking in tongues? Shame! For a movie designed to juice a franchise and change the pace it really didn’t. But Chaves is back to wrap things up, this time tossing in some super-heroics for shits and giggles. This isn’t so thrilling.
It’s the ’80s because shoulder pads
Last Rites starts in 1964 and gives us a final dose of emotional and character infrastructure the series has been thin on most of the time, at least as it relates to ghostbusters Lorraine and Ed Warren (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson). In a flashback prologue, we learn how the Warrens very nearly lost their daughter Judy at birth. Only Lorraine’s faith in the grace of God pulled her back from the brink. That’s important. Anyway, we skip ahead to 1986, when Ghostbusters is a thing and the Warrens are viewed as kooks. Lorraine rises above it and brushes the naysayers off, but Ed is butthurt. He’s feeling at loose ends after a heart attack sidelined their work and Lorraine insisted they step back from active demon hunting. Besides, their miracle baby Judy (Mia Tomlinson) is… something and she’s bringing her boyfriend Tony (Ben Hardy, drummer Roger Taylor in Bohemian Rhapsody) around for approval. Tony’s a nervous mess at Ed’s birthday party because he really wants their blessing – he very carefully never says “permission” – to ask for Judy’s hand in marriage. Awwww. How Christian of him.
While this domestic drama is unfolding, the Warrens’ old friend Father Gordon (Steve Coulter) is petitioning both the Church and the Warrens for help with an unholy presence in the home of the very Catholic Smurl family: dad Jack (Elliot Cowan), wife Janet (Rebecca Calder), their daughters Heather, Dawn, Carin and Shannon, and Jack’s parents. It seems an evil entity came into the house with a haunted mirror and is now fucking with the Smurls. And guess what? The Warrens have dealt with this fuckery before. The same mirror almost killed Judy. Dun dun dun!
The Conjuring: Last Rites is the most overtly conservative, traditional family structure-affirming film in the series, playing the story right down the middle so it never feels all up in your face. But scratch the surface and it’s there. Jack is the father who all the girls look to for solutions, the Smurls are being haunted by a broken family unit, and the story concludes with the holy creation of a new one. Sigh. This may not be so frustrating were we to get an idea of what the demons are after, who they are, or where they came from beyond, “They died on this land.” Above all if any of this were terrifying it might be forgivable, but it’s spooky at best (there’s a lot of wypipo walking into dark rooms), and the superhero finale is a head scratcher. Did they really Wonder Twins that shit? Plus, Ed always seems to be in the middle of a heart attack, and Tony – a retired cop (long story) we can assume has at least a little EMS training is never allowed to be useful. He’s not the male head of a household yet, I guess.
That said, when Last Rites works, it really works. The introduction to the Smurls feels a lot like the intro to the Perrons in the OG The Conjuring, a swirling, noisy messy dynamic of multi-generational, engaged family, always cutting each other off, finishing sentences and just knowing what’s going on with who at any given moment. You feel for them. Add to that the ominous dark corners and negative spaces DOP Eli Born (Companion) clearly honed on The Boogeyman. Nothing quite hits the chilling highs of the Clapping Game from the first film (that shit still give me the heebie jeebies) but a dressing room scene and a couple of good jump scares pay off for most of us horror hounds. But yeah, it’s time to close the door on that room of cursed artefacts.