After three spin off Annabelle films and two spin off Nun films we now have a fourth and possibly final core film with The Conjuring Last Rites. It’s 1964 and the Warrens are just starting out with their paranormal investigations with a case that centres around a possessed full length mirror. It’s a mirror even worse than when Piers Morgan was its editor and their encounter with it sees a heavily pregnant Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) go prematurely into labour. Fast forward to 1986 and Lorraine and her husband Ed ( Patrick Wilson) are parents to a college educated daughter and her boyfriend now fiancé (Ben Hardy) and life is sweet…..for the time being. But it’s not quite the case for the Pennsylvania based Smurl family who have taken possession of the same full length mirror which brings with it a whole set of well orchestrated scary set pieces and shock scares that brings the family to its knees and the media flocking to their door step and it’s a missed opportunity that none of the characters look out the window and say, ‘Look at the flocking media!’ but we digress.
The script has the two families lives running in parallel unwittingly connected by the mirror until their stories eventually converge. Part of the issue here is that it takes too long to do so in a fractured narrative. But its inevitable that this will happen as the Warrens attract the most malevolent and ill intentioned like a kind of paranormal version of Prince Harry and it all builds to a haunted house maelstrom of mayhem
But at over two hours it takes too long to get there despite several very effective set pieces and a load of nods to those 1970’s horror blockbusters The Amityville Horror, The Exorcist and The Omen. Helmed once again by Michael Chaves the heir apparent to James Wan who helmed the first two films in the franchise this latest has its moments but the laws of diminishing returns inevitably apply and perhaps its now time to close the book on the Warrens paranormal practices.
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Here’s The Conjuring Last Rites trailer…..
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