CONJURING: LAST RITES is an emotional, faith-affirming send-off to the Warrens

September 19, 2025

“Once we start, there’s no going back. Anything can happen. And most likely anything will.”

With those words, The Conjuring: Last Rites opens a chapter that feels like both a climax and a farewell. The fourth—and possibly final—mainline entry in Warner Bros. and New Line’s horror juggernaut, the film arrived this month to record-breaking numbers, adding another trophy to a year already packed with studio hits like Sinners, F1, Minecraft, Weapons, Final Destination: Bloodlines, and Superman.

This time, the saga of Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) comes to a close that is not just frightening, but profoundly emotional.

Set in 1986, Last Rites loosely adapts the infamous Smurl Haunting in Pittston, Pennsylvania. At the heart of the terror is a cursed mirror, first seen in a flashback to the Warrens’ earliest case in the 1960s. In that encounter, the mirror’s evil nearly caused a pregnant Lorraine to miscarry their daughter Judy. Two decades later, the mirror resurfaces when it’s gifted to a teenager named Heather (the excellent Kíla Lord Cassidy), unleashing violent supernatural attacks on her family.

Meanwhile, the Warrens are semi-retired, with Ed still struggling after the events of The Devil Made Me Do It. They continue lecturing at colleges, though Ed bristles at the skepticism they face. Their daughter Judy (Mia Tomlinson), now grown, battles her own re-emerging psychic gifts, lingering trauma from Annabelle and Valak, and the pressures of her engagement to Tony (Ben Hardy). When their longtime ally Father Gordon (Steve Coulter) is killed by the demon haunting the Smurls, Judy decides it’s her turn to confront the evil that almost ended her life before it began.

The film is produced by franchise creator James Wan and scripted by Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing (The Autopsy of Jane Doe), and series regular David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick. Directing duties once again fall to Michael Chaves, who has grown considerably since The Curse of La Llorona. After finding his footing with The Nun II, Chaves takes full command here, delivering a film that feels both reverent of Wan’s vision and distinct in its style.

And truthfully, Chaves might just give Wan a run for his money.

Last Rites is everything longtime fans love about the series, amplified. It balances deeply human drama with skin-crawling scares, and at just over two hours, takes its time immersing viewers in the Smurl family’s lives. By the time the horror escalates, we care about the people at its center.

The scares themselves are inventive and memorable: a grotesque sequence of bloody vomit, a floating doll that jolted my entire theater, eerie quiet moments like a phone cord slipping into a dark pantry, and a mirror-room set piece that lingers in the mind. Even Annabelle makes an appearance in a chilling scene that had the audience holding its breath.

Visually, Chaves excels. His sense of space, already improving in The Nun II, reaches new heights here. Period-accurate textures and authentic production design give weight to the supernatural, grounding the terror in a world that feels unsettlingly real.

If there’s one drawback, it’s the lack of lore surrounding the haunted mirror. These films usually revel in their demonology—Bathsheba, Valak, the Cult of the Ram—and the mirror feels underexplored, perhaps intentionally teased for a potential spin-off. Still, the film is less about expanding mythology and more about exploring legacy and faith.

The film asks a poignant question: when the past haunts us, do we run from it—or rise to meet it?

That theme runs throughout. Lorraine doubts Judy’s strength to open her senses. Ed doubts Tony’s ability to protect her. But by the end, Lorraine urges Judy to embrace her gifts, and Ed symbolically entrusts Tony with the keys to the Warrens’ vault. It’s a passing of the torch, framed not as fear of inheritance but acceptance of it.

In 2023, I argued that the Conjuring films should be considered “faith-based horror,” where the power of God is treated as tangibly real as the Force in Star Wars or superpowers in a comic book film. Last Rites doubles down on that idea. Like The Devil Made Me Do It, which explored the legal recognition of God and evil, this entry insists that faith—belief in good over evil—is the true weapon in the Warrens’ world.

The result is a horror film that manages to be both terrifying and spiritually resonant. Fans who have followed Wilson and Farmiga’s Ed and Lorraine for more than a decade will likely find themselves misty-eyed by the end.

Because The Conjuring: Last Rites isn’t just about saying goodbye to another chapter of horror—it’s about saying goodbye to family.

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