The last ride, or is it
Studios love the word final. It sounds grand and tidy and it gets people to rush out to see what feels like the end of an era. When The Conjuring team stamps Last Rites on the marquee and tells us this is the closing chapter for Ed and Lorraine Warren, many fans will raise an eyebrow. The series is too successful to just turn off the lights. The film itself seems to understand that skepticism and answers it with a wink and some care. It gives us a farewell that also plants seeds. This is not a door slamming shut. It is a careful handoff to new leads who have been there all along, waiting on the edges of the frame. The torch does not fall to the floor. It is passed to Judy Warren and her boyfriend Tony Spera.
They are not thrown at us as replacements either. They ease into the center in a way that feels like family business. Tony is meeting the parents as the story begins. That is always nerve wracking for a normal couple. Imagine doing it while the in laws are the most famous paranormal investigators in America and the world is already busy with things that go bump in the night. Before long all four are drawn into a case in Pennsylvania that is packed with curses and visions and the kind of malevolent clutter the Warrens made a career confronting. There are echoes from the past. It is not just another house with a strange noise in the attic. The script threads this haunting back to the earliest days of the couple and they feel it in their bones.
A memory that refuses to be buried
The film opens in 1964 on a day that changed this family forever. Ed and Lorraine are probing a mirror that refuses to behave like glass. What happens next is so intensely personal that it literally brings on Judy’s birth and nearly costs the Warrens their child. It is an electric prologue. You can feel that it is not there for decoration. Movies do not give you a moment like that unless it matters later. The story circles back to it in a way that adds weight to everything that follows. It is as if the past has been standing in the doorway, arms folded, waiting for its moment to speak.
There is also a faint whisper of another kind of horror story, the kind where fate has a ledger that must be balanced. One of the sly pleasures here is how the movie toys with the idea that the beyond does not forget. You can try to sidestep an appointment, but the bill comes due. That theme lets the filmmakers give Judy and Tony a meaningful stake. They are not just kids tagging along. They are part of a legacy that is beautiful and heavy at the same time.
A new year, the same shadows
Most of the action happens in 1986. The timeline has moved ahead of the other films. The Warrens are older. They have already decided to stop going into the field, not because they do not care, but because you can only get knocked down so many stairs before your body says enough. Ed has heart trouble now. It is one of those details that comes from their real lives, which the film quietly weaves into its fabric. People who have read about the real couple will know that his condition mattered, and that in time Tony would have a larger role in preserving their work, including that strange little room full of items no one sane would keep in a house.
The movie acknowledges those truths without turning into a docudrama. It lets the facts hum beneath the surface. Ed’s vulnerability colors the decision making. Lorraine’s sensitivity feels deeper and in some ways more fragile. We see them loving each other the way people do who have navigated storms together, and that gives the scares a different tone. Ghosts are one thing. Time is another. The story understands both.
A smaller case with larger consequences
If you go in expecting the most layered mystery in the series, you might be disappointed. The particulars of the Pennsylvania haunting are not as intricate as some earlier tales. The household at the center does not get a lot of time to breathe. Aside from one teenage daughter, who stands out more than the others, the people in that home are lightly drawn. The original film found a whole family and gave them space to be vivid. Here the emphasis is elsewhere.
That choice means the case functions more as a crucible for the Warrens and their successors than as a world unto itself. It is a stage for a family story about trust, inheritance, and what it costs to accept a calling you did not ask for. The investigation has its jolts and its creeping dread, but the heart of the film is not hidden in a basement. It is across the dinner table.
A family story wearing a ghost story’s clothes
What really holds you is the domestic dance inside the Warren household. Judy would like to be ordinary. I think lots of children of extraordinary parents understand that feeling. She has her mother’s gift and sometimes it feels more like a weight than a blessing. You can see her push and pull against it. By the end she stops running from herself. She chooses to step into the work with clear eyes and a steady hand. It is the kind of growth the series has not focused on before, and it adds warmth.
Tony is the audience’s stand in in many ways. He is trying to make a good impression. He is brave and sincere, but he is also walking into a home where the unusual is normal. His main test is with Ed. Their scenes together feel lived in. Ed is a thoughtful man, but he still carries the expectations of his era. There is a painting of John Wayne on the wall in a key location. It never does anything silly. It does not need to. It is a quiet reminder of an ideal of toughness Ed learned young, the kind of thing men of his generation were taught to honor. He cannot entirely set it down, even as he proves again and again that real strength can look like gentleness and grace.
A new visual rhythm
Michael Chaves returns to the director’s chair after earlier entries in the franchise. You can feel his touch right away. The movie loosens the formal grip of the style that defined the James Wan era and adopts a more roaming, immediate gaze. The camera often feels like it is breathing with the actors. There is shallow focus and a handheld energy that makes the world feel intimate and a bit unstable. The eighties setting comes through not just in props and hair but in the texture of the images. At times it feels almost like a home video grew up and learned how to be scary.
That choice turns out to be smart. The aesthetic supports the story’s emphasis on family. You feel close to these people. You see fear pass over a face and know it is not only about phantoms. It is also about the fear of letting someone you love down. When the supernatural erupts, the shifts in visual language are controlled and expressive rather than showy. The camera jumps when the characters do. It is a good match for a chapter that wants to be both personal and unsettling.
Eyes that find danger in the corners
Cinematographer Eli Born does excellent work. He understands how the technology of the period can be used not just as dressing but as a delivery system for unease. Old surveillance monitors and soft, clunky camcorder tapes become tools for hide and seek with the audience. You stare at an image that seems harmless and then, only once your guard is down, something wrong emerges in a corner of the frame. The trick never feels cheap because the compositions are so thoughtful. He is a name to watch. There is a delicacy to how he places darkness and light that will stick with you.
These choices give the film a specific flavor within the series. It is not trying to outdo earlier set pieces by going larger. It goes smaller and stranger. You have to lean in. That creates a different kind of involvement and it suits a story that is as much about looking closely at one another as it is about chasing a demon away.
The performances that built a franchise
From the very first film, the beating heart of The Conjuring has been Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson. Their chemistry, their craft, their unforced affection, these are the qualities that set these movies apart. That continues here. Farmiga is especially remarkable. She has a way of showing interior life that makes you believe without question that Lorraine is touching something beyond our senses. Even in scenes that are more functional, she gives you surprises. She turns quiet moments into small revelations. It is rare to watch an actor radiate calm and intensity at the same time. She does it again and again.
Wilson matches her with a more restrained energy. There is a humility in his work that suits Ed. He is not less than his wife. He is different. Their bond is balanced. When the plan shifts into action, he brings a sturdy physical presence that makes the peril feel immediate. In gentler stretches he listens in a way that tells you everything about their marriage. There are also nods to the real Ed Warren’s unusual standing with the Church. The film mentions his special authorization to perform exorcisms even though he was not Catholic. That detail underlines how the character fits into the world, both skeptical and faithful at once.
We believe in them. We believe they believe in each other. That is why the scares land and the quiet beats glow. Without that center, the franchise would be just another trip through a haunted corridor. With it, the stories feel like they matter.
Less spectacle, more soul
Some fans will rank Last Rites lower on the scare meter. The movie holds its main location at arm’s length for a surprisingly long time. Ed and Lorraine do not step inside the haunted home until about halfway through. It has the same structure you see in that classic where the veteran priest arrives only when everything else has failed. The delay works even if it frustrates a little. Once the couple crosses the threshold, the narrative locks in and does not let go.
The final stretch is tense and unnerving and yet it is also warm. That is a tricky mix. Many films tell us that families are stronger together. This one shows it and makes you feel it. The climax gives everyone a task and lets them meet it. The resolution does not come from a holy object alone. It comes from practice and trust and love. That might sound corny on paper. It does not play that way. It feels earned because the film has spent its time in kitchens and living rooms as much as in shadowy basements.
A hand across generations
The interesting thing about saying goodbye is that you can do it while also saying come with me. This chapter accomplishes that. If this truly is the last major case for Ed and Lorraine, then the send off is respectful and tender. If the studio changes its mind later, the groundwork has been laid for a new duo to take calls when the cold spots bloom and the walls rattle. Judy and Tony step forward without tripping. They are not copies of the central pair. They react differently. They will make other choices. That is good. It keeps the world alive.
There is also a practical wisdom in how the film tilts the narrative toward them without turning the older couple into bystanders. The respect runs both ways. Judy does not take over because her parents are in the way. She steps in because it is time and because the circumstances demand it. Tony proves himself not by posturing but by patience and courage. He wins Ed over one small act at a time. The man who grew up with rough and ready heroes on the wall learns to see a quieter kind of strength and decides it counts.
What lasts after the lights come up
Looking back on the movie, the image that sticks is not only the final confrontation. It is a family that has decided to stay a family in the face of things that would terrify most of us into isolation. There is a reason the Warrens’ room of cursed objects fascinates people. It is the idea that evil can be contained and cataloged. The films have always wrestled with that idea. Last Rites adds the thought that memory is also an artifact. The past is in that room too, and you have to know it and honor it if you want to keep the door closed.
This is not the scariest entry in the series and it is not the most elaborate. It is, however, one of the most heartfelt. It trusts that audiences will lean in for a story about people as much as about specters. It lets the style evolve without losing the old magic. It respects the real lives that inspired the legends without being a lecture. And it invites a new generation to take a seat at the table while the old guard still has the strength to offer advice.
A quiet, confident farewell that leaves a candle burning
The Conjuring has endured because it believes in its characters even more than it believes in its demons. Last Rites keeps that promise. If this is the finish line for Ed and Lorraine as the central figures, then they cross it hand in hand, still watching out for each other, still willing to step into a dark room if someone on the other side needs help. The movie honors that spirit and then turns, very gently, to the next chapter. The candle is left burning. Someone will be there to tend it.
Walk out of the theater and you may find yourself smiling more than you expected for a horror film. Not because the danger was not convincing. It was. But because the story remembered that courage is contagious and that love, even when tested by the strangest things, can be a shield. That is a good note to end on. Or maybe not an ending at all. More like a pause. The door is not locked. The house is quiet for now. If the phone rings again, you know who will pick up.
