Studio:   New Line Cinema
Director: Michael Chaves
Writer:   Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick
Producer: James Wan, Peter Safran
Stars:    Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Mia Tomlinson, Ben Hardy, Steve Coulter, Rebecca Calder, Elliot Cowan, Beau Gadsdon, Kila Lord Cassidy, John Brotherton, Shannon Kook

Review Score:

Summary:

While their daughter Judy begins a new romance, Ed and Lorraine Warren investigate a house whose haunting soon threatens their own family.

Synopsis:

On April 20th, 1964, demonologist Ed Warren and his pregnant wife Lorraine interview Victoria Grainger about a paranormal presence in her family’s antique store that supposedly drove her father to hang himself. Lorraine suddenly goes into labor when she touches a cursed mirror connected to the case.

Rushed to the hospital, Lorraine feels the presence stalking her and her baby. The child is delivered stillborn and declared dead, but miraculously comes to life in Lorraine’s arms after she and Ed pray together. The couple names their daughter Judy, who grows up to be psychic-sensitive like her mother.

In West Pittston, Pennsylvania, in 1986, Janet and Jack Smurl celebrate their teenage daughter Heather’s confirmation. As a gift, Heather’s grandparents give her the mirror seen in 1964, which they picked up at a swap meet. The Smurl family, which also includes Heather’s older sister Dawn and younger sisters Carin and Shannon, soon begins experiencing various instances of paranormal activity, including frightening visions of an old crone and an ax-wielding man.

Creeped out by the mirror, Heather and Dawn take it outside to the trash. When the mirror is picked up and crushed in a garbage truck’s compactor, Dawn violently vomits bloody shards of glass at the same time.

Judy Warren brings her boyfriend of six months, former police officer Tony Spera, to the Warren house in Connecticut for a party celebrating Ed’s birthday. Tony meets several associates of Judy’s parents, including Father Gordon, Brad Hamilton, and Drew. Lorraine has a personal conversation with her daughter where she expresses concern for the recent rise in Judy’s disturbing psychic visions.

Privately presenting a ring he purchased, Tony asks Ed and Lorraine for permission to wed their daughter. Although Ed expresses reservations due to the short length of the courtship, Lorraine happily gives Tony their blessing. When Judy unexpectedly interrupts, the moment turns into an impromptu marriage proposal, which Judy enthusiastically accepts.

After the party, Father Gordon tells Ed and Lorraine that several families have reached out for help with their paranormal problems. Warned by Ed’s doctor that he cannot risk another heart attack, Lorraine declines due to Ed’s health.

Desperate for help after Jack is paralyzed by a demonic vision and Heather is attacked by the ax-wielding ghost, the Smurl family takes their story to the media. Their house’s haunting becomes a national news sensation attracting numerous reporters and onlookers to the home.

Lorraine takes Judy shopping for a wedding dress. Left alone in a fitting room, Judy has an unnerving encounter with a ghostly woman as well as an evil doppelganger in a mirror until Lorraine comes to her rescue.

Acting in an unofficial capacity, Father Gordon visits the Smurl home just as the grandmother is taken away in an ambulance after something unseen pushed her down the stairs. While blessing the house, Father Gordon sees his holy water causing smoke in the basement, prompting him to leave immediately.

Father Gordon visits the office of Bishop McKenna to appeal for a formal inquiry by the Catholic Church. While waiting for his appointment, the priest suffers a nosebleed, sees a secretary inexplicably vanish, and burns his hand when his crucifix bursts into flames. Father Gordon’s supernatural experience ends when he is driven to hang himself in the building’s stairwell.

Ed shows Tony the collection of occult artifacts he and Lorraine collected throughout their lengthy careers. The two men have an earnest discussion about how Judy nearly died at birth and what she means to Ed and Lorraine.

At Father Gordon’s funeral, Judy touches the casket and sees a vision of the priest’s traumatic death. Another priest confirms Father Gordon was in Pennsylvania when he died.

After a vision of finding her keepsake locket with Judy’s photo clogging a kitchen sink that subsequently overflows with blood, Lorraine warns her husband that something is wrong with Judy. Tony then comes to the house to tell them Judy felt compelled to go to the Smurl house in Pennsylvania on her own.

Ed, Lorraine, and Tony join Judy at the Smurl house. Although Lorraine wants Judy to return with them to Connecticut for their own safety, Judy insists on helping the troubled family.

Tony and Ed continue to bond as Tony learns more about the work the Warrens do. Tony also tells Ed how he quit being a police officer because of an incident where a suspect tried to shoot him, but his life was saved because the gun misfired.

Lorraine’s supernatural sensitivity tells her that the land the Smurl house is on is haunted by three spirits. A farmer named Abner discovered his wife Nellie had an affair. Enraged, Abner used an ax to kill both Nellie and her elderly mother while the two women attempted to hide. Lorraine adds that a greater force is driving the three spirits to torment the Smurls.

Her mother’s mimicked voice lures Judy to an attic where the mirror mysteriously reappeared. A series of unsettling events culminates in a vision of the Annabelle doll growing to an enormous size and chasing Judy until she falls and hits her head. Ed and Lorraine help their daughter recover.

Ed and Lorraine investigate the attic and find the mirror they previously encountered in 1964. Over Ed’s objection, Lorraine touches the mirror and warns something is different about it.

Ed and Lorraine tell the Smurls how their 1964 encounter with that same mirror was also their first encounter with a demon. Ed adds that they abandoned the case and never went back to Victoria Grainger out of fear for the experience’s connection to Judy nearly dying at birth.

Violent paranormal activity plagues the house as Ed and Jack Smurl attempt to take the mirror outside so Tony can drive it back to Connecticut. Judy becomes possessed and attacks her father. Lorraine confronts Abner, Nellie, and the old crone’s ghosts in the basement.

Ed, Lorraine, and Tony ultimately find Judy hanging from a noose in the attic. After getting her down, Ed performs CPR until his bad heart prevents him from continuing. Tony takes over and eventually resuscitates Judy.

The mirror levitates and spins furiously. Ed reads from the Bible to combat the paranormal activity. Working together, Ed, Lorraine, and Judy push on the glass to hold back the three spirits on the other side until they’re finally exorcised from the mirror. The haunting subsides, allowing the Smurls to continue living there without incident for three more years.

Ed and Tony add the mirror to the collection in the Warren home, where Ed welcomes Tony to the family by giving him the keys to the occult museum room. Judy and Tony go on to marry in front of wedding attendees who include Carolyn and Cindy Perron, Janet and Peggy Hodgson, and David Glatzel, all of whom were involved in previous cases investigated by Ed and Lorraine.

Review:

“The Conjuring: Last Rites” purports to be “based on the true story” of the Smurl family, who claimed a demon haunted their Pennsylvania home between 1974 and 1989, although it’s anyone’s guess where facts are supposedly included in any of the film’s outrageously unbelievable fiction. There’s certainly no basis in reality for one of the Smurl daughters violently vomiting shards of glass, a sinister presence possessing a priest to commit suicide, or the infamous Annabelle doll growing into a twelve-foot-tall monster. But if the movie stuck to the truth that Jack Smurl literally had water in his brain, that Ed and Lorraine Warren were only briefly involved in the investigation, and that a mirror had just a peripheral connection to unremarkable events, then the controversial couple wouldn’t have a cursed item to add to their collection and the movie would only be four minutes long.

“The Conjuring: Last Rites” follows the proven formula for delivering the suspenseful style of a Conjuring Universe film as well as the formula for pushing out standard Hollywood fare. Following the Conjuring formula is a foolproof plan, as evidenced by the movie’s staggering box office haul breaking all kinds of records. Following the traditional trappings of generic moviemaking, on the other hand, contributes much more to the film’s mediocrity.

The first taste of “this is how everyone always shoots this sequence” comes when an encounter with a haunted mirror causes a pregnant Lorraine Warren to suddenly go into labor in 1964. She’s immediately rushed to the hospital, with Ed at her side joining nurses and doctors speeding her gurney down a hospital hallway. Heartbreakingly, Lorraine’s baby is delivered stillborn. The audience knows better, of course. With the immobile infant cradled in her arms, God grants Lorraine’s prayer, and the Warrens’ daughter Judy takes her first breath before growing up to be psychic-sensitive like her mother.

The cursed mirror returns 22 years later as a gift for young Heather Smurl, who no doubt wanted a big piece of glass still broken from where Lorraine touched it set in a frame carved with three creepy baby heads. Then again, no normal child would want a doll that looks like Annabelle either, so that’s consistent with odd objects in the Conjuring Universe.

The mirror isn’t in the Smurl house for a hot minute before the kitchen ceiling crashes on the family, kicking off a series of supernatural events that include terrifying visions of an old crone and an ax-wielding hillbilly. Eventually, Heather and her sister get the right idea to throw the thing in the trash. The mirror gets chewed up in the compactor of a garbage truck, simultaneously causing one of the Smurl girls to spew the broken glass mentioned earlier. Once again, the audience knows better. Somehow, the mirror mysteriously reappears in the attic, inexplicably intact and even more intent on terrorizing the family.

Ed and Lorraine can’t get involved yet for two reasons. Three if you count the fact that they were barely involved with the Smurl haunting in real life. The first is Ed’s worrisome heart condition, which has Lorraine as concerned for his health as she is about the recent increase in daughter Judy’s worrisome visions. The second is that “The Conjuring: Last Rites” spends a significant portion of its 135-minute runtime setting up a detailed romance between Judy Warren and her future husband Tony Spera, seemingly as a backdoor audition “just in case” they can carry on conjuring after Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga call it quits.

Apologies to the two actors playing Judy and Tony, but they don’t possess anything close to the chemistry or charisma of Wilson and Farmiga to keep the main Conjuring continuity in theaters. At best, they might carry a TV spinoff, although a better idea would be “early years” adventures featuring the duo who portray younger Ed and Lorraine Warren instead.

Similarly to how George A. Romero used to call up Tom Savini whenever a new “of the Dead” movie was in the works and say, “start thinking of ways to kill people,” the Conjuring creators probably get a new project going and say, “start thinking of signature scares.” Sadly, “The Conjuring: Last Rites” doesn’t have a standout fright that can compete with the ones James Wan choreographed in the first two films. Most of the moments are average, especially an underwhelming climax where Lorraine highlights her uselessness by merely screaming incessantly while Ed and Tony fight for Judy’s life. The same goes for an ending that weirdly doesn’t resolve much for the Smurls, who are mere passengers in their own story, even after Lorraine magically acquires background exposition about the three spirits haunting the house.

As a “true story,” “The Conjuring: Last Rites” is a huge heap of imaginary fantasy. As a tribute to Ed and Lorraine Warren, it’s another predictable whitewash that conveniently ignores lurid accusations to paint two charlatans as pious heroes. As a horror movie, an insistence on sticking to familiar patterns makes the film mostly fine, at least on par with the equally “okay” “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” (review here). Of those three possible POVs, that last one matters most, as anyone with a logical brain and cursory knowledge of the “true story” can cut through the cloying claptrap to at least accept “The Conjuring: Last Rites” as play-it-safe popcorn entertainment.

NOTE: There is a brief post-credits scene.

Review Score: 55