The Conjuring: Last Rites Turns the Horror Franchise into a Schmaltzy Soap Opera

This post contains full spoilers for The Conjuring: Last RiTES.

It all ends with a wedding.

In the final moments of The Conjuring: Last Rites, paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) dance together at the wedding of their daughter Judy (Mia Tomlinson) and new son-in-law Tony (Ben Hardy), surrounded by their friends. Among the revelers are people whom the couple helped in the past: there’s Carolyn Perron (Lili Taylor), Janet Hodgson (Madison Wolfe), and David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard). Even James Wan, who directed the first two films and continues to be involved as producer and writer, can be found among the smiling throng.

Including these characters as wedding guests standing within a Catholic cathedral makes perfect sense for The Conjuring. The franchise has always been about the importance of the nuclear family and of Catholic faith. The Warrens regularly use prayer and scripture as the ultimate defense against dark forces, and their marriage serves as a corrective for wayward families who find themselves vulnerable to demonic attacks.

Some might be surprised to hear the franchise described as a work of conservative ideology, but it’s true. Even beyond the explicit form of Catholicism espoused by the movies’ version of the Warrens, many plot points revolve around demons attacking when the nuclear family breaks down, whether its dad being on the road too long or a woman raised by a single father.

But where previous entries offered pleasures to viewers with different politics, The Conjuring: Last Rites puts its ideology before character or even scares, thereby diminishing even the better movies that preceded it.

The Specter of Conservativism

A quick glance at the critical and cultural response to The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2 shows that mass audiences could enjoy those movies despite their frequently conservative perspective, in the same way they could ignore the movie’s sanitizing of the actual Ed and Lorraine Warren, who have been credibly accused of exploitation and abuse.

That’s nothing particularly new for cinema. Buster Keaton’s acrobatics make The General a blast despite its Confederate trappings. Dirty Harry is simultaneously a celebration of state violence and a taut thriller. Poltergeist suggests that little Carol Anne can only be saved if the hippie Freemans become Reaganites, but it remains an incredibly entertaining horror film.

The first two Conjuring movies followed in the footsteps of these films by giving viewers something more than its worldview. In both The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2, Wan uses his bravado filmmaking to stage impressively scary set pieces. The first two films benefit from the not just the charisma and chemistry that Wilson and Farmiga bring to their characters, but also from the strong supporting cast that portrays the beleaguered families they help. Wilson is so charming when he sings an Elvis song in The Conjuring 2 that we don’t notice that the film is suggesting this family run by a single mother needs the presence of a man to set things right.

Since Wan stepped out of the director’s chair and Michael Chaves stepped in, those pleasures have dissipated and the worldview has become impossible to ignore. It’s not just that Chaves is less skilled than Wan, although that’s certainly true: most of Chaves’s scares come from inserting a loud noise into the soundtrack after a period of silence. It’s that the movies become primarily about defending conservative Catholicism and the nuclear family.

In the third entry The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (who previously had a screenwriting credit in the second movie, alongside original writers Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes), the Warrens’ beliefs are literally on trial. Chaves puts all his dramatic emphasis on the resentment that the Warrens feel when the judge treats their claims of demonic possession as illegitimate. When the judge finally allows it, thus absolving killer Arne (Ruairi O’Connor) of guilt for killing his landlord, Chaves presents the scene as an ultimate victory.

The pleasure of the film comes not through its scares, but in seeing the Warrens’ belief proven correct in a court of law.

Last Rites Leans Right

The Conjuring: Last Rites goes even further. The script, credited to Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, and Johnson-McGoldrick (from a story by Johnson-McGoldrick and James Wan) focuses on an undefined evil that has been forever haunting the Warrens’ daughter Judy. As they prepare for their retirement and, eventually, Judy’s marriage to Tony, Ed and Lorraine get called to deal with three ghosts haunting the Smurls, a working-class Catholic family in Pittson, Pennsylvania. Along the way, Ed must face his mortality while Lorraine must realize that she and Judy should face their fears instead of avoiding them.

For most of the film’s 135-minute runtime, Chaves focuses on these interpersonal concerns, only occasionally returning to horror set-pieces. Ed and Lorraine’s retirement party, shot in hand-held close-ups and smeared with gauzy golden hour sunlight takes up as much screen time as any other sequence in the film. A theoretically exciting scene in which a ghost attacks Judy in a roomful of mirrors spends more time on mother and daughter sharing their feelings than it does on the supernatural attack.

In theory, there’s nothing wrong with this focus. Good characters can make for good horror because we care about what happened to the people. However, Last Rites only understands its characters’ development along strictly conservative ideological lines. Ultimately, Ed and Lorraine need to step aside to let Judy and Tony take over, from nuclear family to nuclear family.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the climactic scene. After a ghost possesses Judy and makes her hang herself, Ed vigorously tries to resuscitate her while Lorraine prays for God to restore her daughter. Suddenly, Ed’s heart gives out and he must let Tony, whom he’s kept away from the family business, take over. Symbolically, Ed gives away his daughter to Tony. When Judy comes back to life through Tony’s actions, then Lorraine’s prayers are answered, as God blesses the union.

The Final Ideological Victory

Again, this emphasis on the Warrens as a heterosexual, complementary couple in the conservative Catholic tradition is nothing new for the franchise. It’s been there from the beginning. But Wan and the Hayes knew how to make a movie that was exciting and engaging beyond its beliefs.

Not only does Last Rites fail to show interest in anything beyond its worldview, it draws attention to the worldview present in all the previous entries. By the time that the characters from previous Conjuring movies arrive at the wedding of Tony and Judy, they’re no longer human beings in horrifying situations. They’re endorsers of a particular worldview that has always been present in the Conjuring movies. As such, they support the argument that the Warrens made throughout The Devil Made Me Do It and especially Last Rites: conservative Catholicism is the only truth and the nuclear family is an inherent good.

We can no longer look away from that belief, even in when the first two movies offered much more interesting things to watch.

The Conjuring: Last Rites is now playing in theaters.