The Conjuring Last Rites Movie Review: With no real jump scares, horror franchise deserved a better send-off

The living mostly have been the better part of The Conjuring than the dead, and so is the case this time. There is a family of eight in Pennsylvania, the Smurls, whose house becomes the subject of a haunting following their acquisition of a possessed mirror. The Smurls include two young twins, two teenage daughters, their parents and their grandparents, and the banter and confusion around the house and dinner table seem all too real.

You can feel their fear when they realise there is a presence around their cluttered house. However, because this is a send-off, the film spends a long time on the Warren family as well. It starts with the birth of their daughter, in positively horrific circumstances, in 1964, and follows them in bits and parts through her growing up years till 1986. Now Judy (Tomlinson) has a steady boyfriend, Tony (Hardy), and a longish sequence deals with Ed coming to terms with letting go of their daughter, who keeps hearing things too.

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Meanwhile, the Warrens have technically “retired”, with Ed’s heart seen as too weak to handle the shocks their work involves. But, of course, the paths of the Pennsylvania family and the Warrens do cross. And how they do, is a convoluted story of its own.

This is when the fun is supposed to start, with the Warrens going about their work in the genteel 1980s sort of way, which is frankly what put the Conjuring films apart. The downside is there is nothing you haven’t seen before – with even characters from previous Conjuring films popping up to say their farewells.

The Conjuring Last Rites movie cast: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Mia Tomlinson, Ben Hardy
The Conjuring Last Rites movie director: Michael Shaves
The Conjuring Last Rites movie rating: 2 stars