' THE CONJURING : THE LAST RITES ' : FILM SERIES REVIEW

BY the time The Conjuring : The Last Rites happens as the ninth entry in the Conjuring film series, Ed and Lorraine Warren [ Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga ] have had enough with demonic close encounters.

In the present [ the film is set in 1984 ], Ed and Lorraine have all but hung up their ghost-busting services.

When the Smurl family, loud and full of life, move into a house in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, their happiness is short-lived as the grandfather presents the demon-infested mirror to Heather [ Kila Lord Cassidy ].

The mirror, and its malevolence, makes the Smurl family a media sensation [ the real Smurl ] family were popular enough that 20th Century Fox made a tele-movie about them in 1991], and eventually Ed and Lorraine find themselves face-to-face with the evil mirror from the past.

Director Michael Chaves, now a veteran of the Conjuring universe - he directed The Curse of La Llorona,  The Conjuring : The Devil Made Me Do It, and The Nun II - puts the emphasis on the well-established  human characters, giving Wilson, Farmiga, Tomlinson, Ben Hardy [playing Judy's boyfriend ], and the actors of the Smurl family, enough space to perform amidst done-to-death horror tropes - the kitchen sink overflowing with blood, the creepy doll, the people with white make-up that lurk in the shadows.

By the end, although the horror is virtually non-existent - and this is coming from someone who loves getting scared watching movies - and the fact that the demons and their exorcism are ineffectively, inexpertly pulled off [ we only get a fleeting backstory of the evil at large ], the pull of the actors and the slow, emotionally grounded, almost reverential storytelling of the Warrens' last big adventure,  makes the film the second-best entry of The Conjuring movies. 

The World Students Society thanks Mohammad Kamran Jawaid.