Nothing in the Dark

Like I said back in August, the Conjuring movies aren’t for me. I have never found James Wan’s horror series especially scary; the stuff that gives him the creeps just looks silly to me, and his habit of having characters wander into dark rooms and wait for something to jump out at them just feels overtly manipulative. But that’s what the fans want, I guess. They certainly keep showing up.

And to Wan’s credit, the Conjuring franchise was an efficient, effective way to repackage the slow-burn spookhouse silliness of his Insidious movies on a bigger scale, with a PG-rated period frame and built-in appeal to faith-based audiences with its stories of that brave Christian couple Ed and Louise Warren, who claimed to have beaten back demons with a combination of second sight and old-fashioned prayer all over America. Lorraine was the wide-eyed medium; Ed was the holy roller with the bum ticker, risking his life to chant Bible verses in whatever direction Lorraine pointed him.

It was all bullshit, of course, but a clean-cut couple bringing the Lord’s word to the terrified masses was a great act, and in the ’70s it was catnip to media organs looking for another hit of that sweet Exorcist buzz; Wan’s movie, of course, took the Warrens at their word and sees all manner of pasty, razor-tooth ghouls lurking in the shadows. And casting Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as the Warrens gave that initial the project a lot more class than it might otherwise have had: Neither actor ever condescends to the material, and they find a lovely, relaxed rapport that grounds a lot of the nonsense around them.

Over the course of the series, the fictional Warrens have confronted accursed dolls, English poltergeists, malevolent nuns and possessed spree killers. The Conjuring: Last Rites – directed by Michael Chaves, who helmed the previous installment, 2021’s The Devil Made Me Do It, as well as the spinoff sequel The Nun II – introduces a new menace, a haunted mirror the couple first encountered in 1964, when Lorraine was pregnant with their daughter Judy. The confrontation was so intense that Judy was immediately stillborn, revived only through the intensity of Lorraine’s prayer – another highly suspect story the movie accepts at face value.

Flash-forward to 1986, with the Warrens retired from ghostbusting due to age and the cardiac condition that’s plagued Ed throughout the series. That ungodly mirror turns up in the multigenerational Pennsylvania home of the Smurl family – and wouldn’t you know it, they’re being plagued by mysterious accidents. Ed and Lorraine’s old pal Father Gordon (Steve Coulter) tries to investigate the case on his own, but he’s no match for the evil he finds there; after his funeral, the grown Judy (Mia Tomlinson) and her fiancé Tony (Ben Hardy) persuade the Warrens to make one more house call. Oh, and also Judy shares Lorraine’s gift and the mirror really hates that.

It takes about an hour for Last Rites to get the Warrens to the Smurls’ door, but fans don’t seem to mind the length of these movies; they’re all about the slow, slow build to the next jump scare, and the Conjuring franchise is more than happy to give its audience what it wants. But even as the film tells us, over and over, that this is the last time we’ll see Ed and Lorraine Warren go to holy war, the producers hedge their bets. Last Rites ends with a wedding, not a funeral, and even though the Warrens are discussing their retirement that doesn’t mean they’re closing the door to further adventures. (There are hauntings in Boca, surely.) And given that the movie grossed nearly half a billion dollars worldwide – the highest box-office take of the entire franchise – this probably won’t be the last time Farmiga and Wilson reach for a Bible. Work is work.

Supplementally speaking, Warner’s 4K edition of Last Rites picks up where August’s 4K edition of the original Conjuring left off: Both discs appear to have used the same interview session with Wilson and Farmiga for their special features, and the earlier release’s nostalgic sensibility can be felt here as well. All three of the Last Rites featurettes consider the new movie in the context of its predecessors.

“Last Rites: An Era Ends” runs down all of the ways the final chapter engages with the three previous films in the series, and pointing out that the pews in that big wedding sequence are filled with cast members from those earlier chapters, and even a few behind-the-scenes players. “The Conjuring: Crafting Scares” focuses on Tomlinson as the grown-up Judy Warren, and how this movie places her at the center of the mayhem even though Ed and Lorraine are ostensibly the central characters, while “Michael Chaves: Believer” lets the director recount his own totally real experience with spectral voices during the shoot, which, sure. Perhaps more important is that the film looks and sounds terrific in the UHD presentation, especially when it opens the frame up for two IMAX sequences. These movies may not be for me – like, at all – but I can certainly appreciate the care taken in their production.

The Conjuring: Last Rites is now available in 4K and Blu-ray editions from Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment.

Up next: James Ivory’s Howards End gets a 4K upgrade, but first there’s Friday’s What’s Worth Watching for subscribers to the paid tier! You want to be in the loop, don’t you? Upgrade that subscription and you won’t miss a thing!