Last Rites Corrects Franchise’s Worst Mistake

The Conjuring: Last Rites will be the fourth and potentially final film in the iconic horror series, and it is setting itself up to correct the franchise’s worst Warrens mistake ahead of its ending. While the first two movies in the series are beloved, The Conjuring has made a lot of missteps throughout its history. Last Rites appears to be course-correcting.

Following up on 2021’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Last Rites sees Ed and Lorraine Warren go on another ghost-hunting adventure, where they are tasked with getting rid of a demon who is haunting a client. The trailers for Last Rites make it look absolutely horrifying, setting the entity up to be the franchise’s biggest threat yet.

The Conjuring has been hit or miss, since many of the franchise’s spin-off series, like The Nun and Annabelle, earned more mixed receptions. Fans are hoping that the mainline series can at least stay consistent, with this movie hopefully surpassing the worst of The Conjuring movies.

Last Rites Is A More Traditional Conjuring Movie After The Devil Made Me Do It

The Devil Made Me Do It is often considered to be the worst of the mainline movies, and this is mostly thanks to how different it is from its predecessors. The third Conjuring movie is based on the real-life 1981 trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, a murder case in which Johnson’s defense team intended to prove that he was possessed by a demon at the time of the killing.

In the universe of The Conjuring, demons are real, and the movie confirms that Arne Johnson was actually possessed by a demon at the time of the murder. The film spends most of its runtime focusing on the Warrens intervening in his trial, with them discovering a cult conspiracy that led to the Johnson murder and several other similar killings.

The Devil Made Me Do It’s murder and legal story are a far cry from the other Conjuring movies, and while some found it to be a nice change of pace, many fans didn’t like the pivot away from haunted house stories. On top of that, adding fantasy elements to a real-life murder trial was controversial, as it was seen as lending credence to the defense.

Although there are still a lot of questions surrounding the story of the fourth film, it luckily seems to be a return to form for the franchise. The trailers and synopsis all highlight that this is another haunted house story, moving away from the controversial change-up of The Devil Made Me Do It.

This is a good call for what could be the last Conjuring movie, as it is a throwback to the beloved first two films. While it is possible that The Conjuring: Last Rites is a critical failure, it is at least correcting the issues with the third movie.