Recently I’ve seen the movie The Conjuring: Last Rites. This is supposedly the “last” installment in The Conjuring universe which includes The Conjuring, The Conjuring 2, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, The Nun, The Nun 2, Annabelle, Annabelle Creation, and Annabelle Comes Home. I’ve seen almost all the Conjuring movies and so far, The Conjuring: Last Rites is my least favorite.
What is the Conjuring? The Conjuring universe is based on the real Ed and Lorraine Warren. Ed and Lorraine Warren were paranormal investigators and had many different “cases”. Their cases investigated the “paranormal”, things like ghosts, demons, and hauntings. Directed by Michael Chaves and produced by James Wan, The Conjuring: Last Rites takes place in 1986 and is Ed and Lorraine Warren’s final case. According to The People, it set a new record for the biggest opening weekend for any horror movie ever, beating out Stephen King’s IT adaptation in 2017. All of the media surrounding this movie was big because it was supposed to be the last Conjuring movie. It’s not. There’s rumors they are thinking of making a movie that’s a prequel to all of the Conjuring movies and is about Ed and Lorraine’s story. There’s also apparently a TV show coming out.
So why was this movie so big? Well in the horror genre, the Conjuring universe, in my opinion, is a staple. The first Conjuring movie is ranked #3 of the scariest horror movies of all time on Rotten Tomatoes (just below The Exorcist and Hereditary). If people are into horror, they most likely have seen, or at least heard of, the Conjuring Universe. People have created a love for this franchise. The movie, Annabelle, helped increase the popularity of The Conjuring movies and the Warrens’ real life cases. Annabelle was based on a real doll. She was a Raggedy Ann doll, but she still was scary enough to get a movie based around her. Even I knew about the movie Annabelle when it came out while I was in Elementary school. This allowed more people to get more interested in the horror genre and more importantly the supernatural horror. As years passed and more movies came out, the Conjuring franchise has created a huge fan base, myself included.
The Conjuring universe is one of my favorite horror franchises of all time, so I was excited when I heard about Last Rites. I saw it right when it first released, and unfortunately I was disappointed. To preface, I do watch a lot of horror movies so not a lot scares me, but I personally didn’t find it that scary. There were a couple good jumpscares and some suspense that had me watching from behind my hands. There were more sad things than scary. I think it’s because the other Conjuring movies were about the families getting haunted, whereas this movie was mostly focused on the Warrens and introducing new characters for possible spin off movies.
Overall, even though I didn’t like the movie as much, it was a good ending for the Conjuring movies. I’m sad that it’s over, but apparently there might be more so I’m not too upset. I just don’t think we’ll see Vera Farmiga (Lorraine) and Patrick Wilson (Ed) play their characters (who they have been playing for over 10 years) ever again.
