A disappointing chapter meant to whitewash the Warrens’ legacy without a good story or attempt at being suspenseful.
This one isn’t going to be very long.
Believe it or not, I am a fan of the expanded Conjuring universe. I love demonic possession films and despite their flaws, most of the films are enjoyable if this is your type of horror.
I’ll talk more about the Warrens and Smurls in a separate essay soon, but what I never liked about James Wan et al.’s adaptation of Ed & Lorraine Warren’s work is their depiction of Ed and misrepresentation of each “case” they exploited. The actor who portrays Ed, Patrick Wilson, makes a perfect “good dad” figure to match Vera Farmiga’s maternal warmth, but I worry the revisionist narrative will elevate the Warrens to mainstream cultural figures rather than con artists with a loyal fanbase.
Despite my disdain for Ed, I enjoy these films as fictional stories meant to entertain, but Last Rites (2025) is devoid of passion and even the Christian propaganda element intrinsic to the genre is lackluster. After The Nun II (2023) released, Wilson and Farmiga expressed interest in continuing the series, but they seemed tired of their roles in this one and none of the perilous moments have the same emotional impact as with previous installments.
The most egregious example is Lorraine’s clairvoyance. What made on-screen Lorraine’s “abilities” believable and exciting was their erratic nature–she might see in the future, but only in bits & pieces, and she couldn’t control them. But in this film, every vision Lorraine has is a direct deus ex machina that needs no deciphering or decrypting. Every single one.
And their daughter Judy is an established clairvoyant now, too! With flashbacks never referenced or seen before! How convenient for the franchise.
Then a new demon is introduced around the halfway point and, although the Warrens hinted at a tormentor with a vendetta throughout the series, the reveal is both confusing and anticlimactic. The demon doesn’t appear in visions throughout previous films and isn’t tied to the Nun despite all of the cross-over scenes and implications. Was this bad writing or Michael Chavez’s way of teasing future films?
“There are some really interesting case files in the ’80s and, without giving any of those away, I think it’s also interesting to see the Warrens more as these public figures under scrutiny, skeptics coming at them, them working with police departments. What [The Devil Made Me Do It] hopefully does is open up this new chapter for the Warrens. This has a very unique ending to The Conjuring films. I would be excited to see where it could go from here. What could the Warrens get into? What’s happened to their careers? I think there are so many possibilities…”
I went into my first watch thinking this was the final chapter which might be why I expected more, but if it isn’t then why do we see the future and the museum, etc. framed and edited like a typical end-of-series montage? Last Rites left me with too many questions and no desire for another installment.
Final Thoughts
I feel like people could ignore this film and not miss anything integral to the series.
Can we please leave hagsploitation in 2025? The US government is doing a bang-up job on their own demonizing people of marginalized genders and stripping is of our rights. We don’t need every villain in mainstream horror films to be a misogynist stereotype designed to repulse the audience. No societal script is being subverted with these depictions and nothing is (re)contextualized.