The Conjuring Last Rites is the ninth and final film of The Conjuring film series, giving us a truly frightening experience like none other; scares to make your mind rush for answers and body twitch with fear.
Tying up as many loose ends in the franchise as possible, along with giving us a surprisingly emotional and reflective ending to the series, this film does an almost perfect job in doing so if you ask me.
The Conjuring Last Rites was released on Sept. 8, directed by Michael Chavez, and written by Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson were casted as the paranormal investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren. The two characters were based off of a married couple who were real investigators, and their legacy was honored throughout all nine films of the series.
The first Conjuring movie was released in 2013, inspired by the true story of a 1971 investigation on a Rhode Island farm. This finale is based on the Smurl family haunting, which happened in 1986. Nothing makes my skin crawl more than true stories, besides movies based on true stories.
Unlike most movies in the series with the whole ‘demonic evil house of spirits’ gag, this movie takes the route of an eerie and intimate feeling with true emotional resonance, most out of any horror movie a horror fanatic like myself has seen before. Senior Miles Adams thought that the story line was intriguing, but not as frightening as expected.
“Not as scary as I expected, but it was best for the plot. I can’t lie,” Adams said.
This movie has the ending and entire vibe that I personally would have never expected from a horror movie and I am all for it. I always enjoyed horror movies that included a theme of working together forming and strengthening bonds like Steven King’s IT movies. Along with physiological bone chilling scares that hit close to home, this movie really reaches deep down to your heart with the scares and the resonating themes.
The emotional authenticity from this movie will always be my reason for recommending this movie to friends and family. The problem with that is I feel as if it was not split evenly with emotion and fear as well as it could be. It has wonderful themes, but at the end of the day it is a horror movie, and a lot of jump scares just felt so predictable you could tell they were coming seconds before they happened. With cutting loose ends, the movie seems to scatter to do so, sometimes losing focus with the current plot or subplot they are focusing on.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this movie, to not just horror fans, but to anyone who enjoys movies that make them feel and think. This movie did a great job, with a 2 hour and 15 minute runtime. This film packed everything you could want from a final installment.
