Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Michael Chaves
Starring: Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Mia Tomlinson, Ben Hardy, Rebecca Calder, Elliot Cowan
In the 1973 redneck revenge thriller Walking Tall, Joe Don Baker plays Buford T. Pusser, a real life wrestler who turned sheriff and took on the mobsters running a small Southern town. Said mobsters killed Pusser's wife, and this incident is depicted in the movie, fuelling Pusser's quest for vengeance. The film was a massive hit, inspiring two direct sequels, a TV series and a remake with Dwayne Johnson that spawned two sequels of its own. In a shocking twist, at time of writing the news has just broken that a three-year investigation has now concluded that Pusser's wife wasn't actually killed by gangsters, but by her own husband.
Pusser died in 1974, so at least he didn't live to enjoy the fortune he would have made from royalties. But we'll never be able to watch Walking Tall or any of its sequels or spinoffs in quite the same way now. Lorraine Warren however, made a hell of a lot of money from Hollywood thanks to the Conjuring series before her passing in 2019. Along with her husband Ed, Lorraine had already gotten rich from exploiting vulnerable people by claiming to be able to combat evil spirits. The Warrens made a healthy living attaching themselves tangentially to various famous "haunting" cases, such as Amityville and the Enfield Poltergeist. All such cases have been thoroughly debunked, but that hasn't stopped the producers of the Conjuring series from presenting the exploitative exploits of the Warrens as fact. Of course, nobody in their right mind watches these movies and believes that any of the over the top hijinks depicted on screen actually occurred in real life, but Lorraine got paid regardless. Even if you do believe in such cases, you may be angered at how the Warrens are portrayed as being the saviours of the "victims" of the various "hauntings" when in reality they mostly showed up for photo opportunities. For example, The Conjuring 2 claims that the Warrens were responsible for saving the London family at the centre of the Enfield Poltergeist debacle. In reality the Warrens spent no more than a day with the family, while it was a Jewish exorcist who the family credited with cleansing their home, rather than the Christian Warrens.
Now that Ed and Lorraine are burning in Hell, it's a little easier to sit back and enjoy what is billed as the final instalment in this series, The Conjuring: Last Rites. Or at least it would be if the movie were good. I haven't enjoyed any of these movies (though their Annabelle spinoffs are quite fun), but I've always admired the performances of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as highly flattering versions of Ed and Lorraine. The two actors are better than this franchise deserves, and their likeable portrayals of the Warrens are certainly more than those con artists deserve. The best parts of Last Rites aren't the spook show shtick but rather the intimate moments between Ed and Lorraine and their now adult daughter Judy (Mia Tomlinson). Their scenes together are so affecting that it's a great shame they aren't playing fictional characters we could get behind, rather than a pair of manipulative charlatans like the Warrens. As the title implies, this sees the Warrens take on one last battle with evil, and even though I can't call this a good movie, I came away feeling like I had bid an emotional farewell to a pair of characters I've never particularly cared for, such is the strength of Wilson and Farmiga's commitment to these roles.
The fictional Warrens' final duel with demons was indeed the final "case" of the real life Warrens. Between 1974 and 1989, the Smurl family claimed that their home in rust belt Pennsylvania was haunted by demons that would regularly subject them to physically assaults. To avoid the audience asking the obvious question of why the family would remain in a haunted house for 15 years, this movie condenses the haunting timeline to a few weeks. It's not until the 80 minute mark that the Warrens actually take on the Smurls' case, but those 80 minutes are actually quite watchable. They're split between the family drama of the Warrens, with Judy getting engaged to her ex-cop boyfriend Tony (Ben Hardy), and the terrorising of the Spurls in their crowded multi-generational home.
Michael Chaves, who took over the directorial duties from series creator James Wan, is arguably a better director than Wan, less reliant on jump scares and more invested in attempting to generate slow burn atmosphere. That's why the movie is more successful in its first half, when Chaves is allowed deploy his unsettling slow zooms to good effect. There's some clever choreography of camera and actors to ensure we see certain details at just the right time, and Kíla Lord Cassidy is appropriately spooked as the Smurls' teenage daughter and the centre of the haunting. A creepy old mirror generates a few good scares, even if we know that any attempt to dispose of said supernatural item will prove fruitless.
The movie falls apart once the Warrens rock up to the Smurl house and it all begins to resemble an overblown James Wan movie once again. Slow burn suspense is immediately dispensed in favour of a battle between good and evil that is so loud and over the top it's impossible to believe that none of the Smurls' neighbours have called the cops. The last half hour of the movie is a cacophony of shouting and screaming and bellowing of the more moody verses of the Latin Bible. The film constantly teases Ed having a fatal heart attack, but since we know the real life Ed lived long past 1986 it's a pointless endeavour. This series has always had the same issue as superhero movies, that of the audience knowing form the off that its protagonists are in no real danger. Nevertheless, Last Rites seems to definitively draw a conclusion to the Warrens' story. That said, don't bet against this series carrying on in some form, possibly with Judy and Ben taking the lead.
The Conjuring: Last Rites is in UK/ROI cinemas from September 5th.
