La Conjuration: Derniers rites

I went into this flick hoping for a grand send-off. What I got was a limp, recycled mess that felt more like a bad spin-off than the franchise's finale. The setup had promise, but the movie just dragged until the halfway point. By then, I'd already checked my watch 2 times.

The screenplay? Paper thin. Characters exist just to be spooked, and the scares are predictable jump-outs you can see a mile away. There's no tension, no atmosphere, just loud bangs and cheap tricks. At this point, you can practically set a stopwatch to when the next door will slam.

And then there's Michael Chaves. Let's be real-this isn't his first stumble. La Llorona was weak. The Devil Made Me Do It barely felt like a horror movie. The Nun II was a snooze. And now here we are again, same bag of empty tricks. He confuses loud noises for scares and speed bumps for suspense. If James Wan built this house of horror with care, Chaves has turned it into a carnival ride running out of batteries.

Who in their right mind thought that hey let's give the guy who delivered 3 trashes in a row another story to butcher? Perfect for a franchise closer.

Sure, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga do their best, as always. Their chemistry still works, but they can't carry a whole movie on their backs. A "heartfelt farewell" means nothing when the movie itself can't even scare a nervous teenager in a dark theater.

This latest and final main franchise entry is more personal to the Warrens. Numerous callbacks to the first and second Conjuring, and the emotional weight that brings Ed and Lorraine to come out from retirement, concluding their final rites on unfinished demon business. Loved the return to haunted house.

I just caught 'Conjuring: Last Rites' in theaters & for now I'm giving it a 9/10 though I need to rewatch it, because my phone was blowing up with work during the film & the stress definitely pulled me out of full immersion.

Like every Conjuring-verse film before it, I really enjoyed this one. It does stand apart, though, by leaning more heavily into story & character development than pure horror. I know many viewers will actually appreciate that approach, but for me, it came with a trade-off: because so much time was dedicated to the narrative, the multiple entities involved in the haunting didn't get as much screen time or presence as they could have. A tighter balance (slightly less story, more entity-driven horror) would've made it even stronger.

That said, what's here is still excellent. The storytelling, while heavier, is well done & the film delivers some truly unique scare moments from the demons. It's a different flavour from earlier Conjuring entries, but it still holds that trademark mix of tension, atmosphere & supernatural dread.

Overall, it's another very good addition to the franchise. For now I'm landing at a 9/10, though with a rewatch under less distraction, I could see this score shifting.

Sometimes in life, in order to move forward, we have to go back to the beginning, I guess. Well that's very much the case with Ed and Lorraine Warren in this latest addition to The Conjuring franchise.

What I initially assumed would be a fresh investigation sadly turns out to be more of the same formula we've seen over the past 10 years. There's little here that feels original; most of it either borrows heavily from previous entries or is clearly influenced by familiar tropes. A door left slightly open for the audience to notice... SLAM. A recording or photo reveals a ghostly figure. A quick camera cut - and boom, you're face-to-face with a demon.

My biggest issue with the film is that it simply cannot stand on its own. It leans too heavily on paranormal figures the Warrens have battled before. Yes, there are creepy moments, the buildup often leads to little more than cheap jump scares.

For a film with a runtime of 2 hours and 15 minutes - and a cast of 13 people and one dog - it plays things very safe. Sure there is suspense but, where is the danger? Who is the actual target? These are questions I found myself asking throughout the film. It's an enjoyable however, there's nothing here to challenge the franchise or push it in a new direction.

The conjuring and the conjuring 2 remain some of the best horror films within the last 15 years for my taste. Some would even say the conjuring is one of the top horror films of all time. WAN found his niche within his created conjuring universe with the likes of these films, insidious, and all of the other spin offs. With this has come quite a few more filler movies from other directors that are much less experienced aside from (Whannell) at the helm. Michael Chaves is not a bad director by any means, but this simply does not hold a candle to the first two films or even the last one which was actually decently solid. This one just feels like the most uninteresting of the four and while it has a few decent demonic scares and visuals, it simply does not serve that much of a purpose other than a supposed ending. I actually do not think this will be truly the last of the conjuring films either, though I think it should've ended after the last one. I can think of at least three other films within the universe that aren't even great by any means, but are still more interesting than this. Annabelle Creation, The Nun, and even insidious 4 are all more effective . That's not to say this doesn't have a few redeeming qualities if you're a fan, but if it really was the end, Wan should've ended the Warren's story ...