I went into Last Rites expecting déjà vu — another chapter in a franchise that’s grown creaky with age, where the scares don’t cut as deep and the stories begin to blur. And for the first 40 minutes, that fear felt justified. The film starts with two separate prologues that drag their feet, jumping between timelines and characters in a way that made me feel more tired than tense. But somewhere around the hour mark, when the threads finally tie together, something unexpected happens: the movie finds a heart.
Judy Warren’s story hit me harder than I expected. Watching her come into the world literally during a blackout felt like a metaphor for the life she’s destined for — one foot in the light, one foot in something colder. Even as a child, she’s already fighting battles someone her age shouldn’t have names for. The way she repeats that nursery rhyme to steady herself… there’s something painfully human about that. You can tell she carries the weight of her mother’s gift like a stone in her pocket. It shapes her, scares her, and yet somehow doesn’t break her.
The Smurl family, on the other hand, represent the kind of haunted-house chaos this franchise loves, but they’re also a reminder of how fragile ordinary life can be. Their house doesn’t feel like a setting — it feels like a pressure cooker. Too many people, too many unspoken fears, too many shadows for such a small space. When the mirror arrives, it doesn’t feel like a plot device. It feels like a ticking clock. And when things finally converge and the Warrens show up — battered, aging, and honestly just tired — I felt something I haven’t felt in a Conjuring film in a while: empathy.
Ed and Lorraine aren’t superheroes anymore. They’re older. They’re worn down. Ed’s heart isn’t the only thing failing — so is the illusion that they can keep doing this forever. And maybe that’s why this film works better than it should: because beneath the demons, the possession, the familiar franchise rhythms, there’s a story about people coming to terms with their own limits.
Last Rites isn’t the scariest film in the series. It isn’t the smartest, either. But it has a sense of finality, a quiet sadness, a recognition that every legacy eventually has to pass through someone else’s hands. Judy and Tony aren’t forced replacements — they feel like the natural evolution of a family that’s seen too much darkness to leave the world unguarded.
The movie still stumbles, sure. It’s too long. It sticks too closely to the “based on a true story” schtick. Some moments feel like shadows of better scenes from earlier films. But somewhere under all that is a movie about fear, faith, family, and the exhaustion of fighting battles no one else understands.
And then there’s the technical side of Warner Bros.’ release — solid picture, dependable HDR, clean shadows, nothing eye-popping but nothing messy either. The disc does exactly what it needs to. The bonus features? Forgettable. But the presentation feels steady and confident, like a studio taking care of its long-running franchise even as it changes shape.
In the end, Last Rites surprised me. Not because it reinvented the wheel, but because it remembered something simple and important: horror isn’t just about what you see — it’s about what it makes you feel. And for the first time in a while, a Conjuring film made me feel something again.
Not fear.
Not shock.
But a strange kind of melancholy appreciation.
The sense that the Warrens’ story is coming full circle — and that maybe, just maybe, the torch is ready to be passed.
Are you a fan of this movie? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Cheers,
Matt.
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