Review: The Conjuring: Last Rites

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

I've never quite understood the logic of demons in horror movies like "The Conjuring: Last Rites." They seem to spend a lot of time lurking in the shadows and popping up for a quick scare before disappearing again, leaving their victims time to come up with a plan on how to get rid of them. The endless taunting doesn't seem very productive.

There's a lot of that in this - allegedly - final chapter of "The Conjuring" chronicles, which follows the exploits - a word that could, depending on who you ask, be taken literally - of Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga), parapsychologists who take on cases that have to do with the supernatural.

This fourth chapter of the series involves a 1986 case that, we are told, devastated the family and was therefore the couple's last case, although the film's ending on a happy note doesn't seem to denote that. Regardless, this particular haunting is one that comes with a fair amount of creepy sequences and, yes, jump scares.

The film's first scene is set in the early 1960s when Lorraine has trouble in the delivery room and it appears as if she's being tormented by a demon as she gives birth to her daughter, who nearly dies in the process. Cut to the 1980s when Judy (Mia Tomlinson), the Warrens' supernaturally inclined daughter, gets engaged to Tony (Ben Hardy), a former cop who is supportive of his fiancee, but still has difficulties getting on Ed's good side.

Meanwhile, a family of eight in a working class Pennsylvania town is being terrorized by a demon that bears some similarity to the one that tormented Lorraine during childbirth. The haunting appears to be caused by the presence of a sinister-looking mirror that appears in the early 1960s scenes and the 1986 ones.

The Warrens are contacted by a friend regarding the case, but when that friend meets a gruesome end, they reluctantly get involved. Ed's heart problems had been the primary cause of their hesitation to get back in the game, while Lorraine secretly worries that her daughter has more troubles than she is letting on.

The film ups the ante on the jump scares - you know, people looking around a room in the dark at a specific spot several times, and then on the third or fourth time something suddenly makes an appearance. I've always considered this a cheap scare tactic in movies, but it can be effective when applied correctly. There are a few sequences - especially one involving a closet and a phone on a cord and another that is centered around the rewinding of a videotape - here that are rather spooky.

"The Conjuring: Last Rites" is better than the third entry in the series, but not as effective as the original two pictures. All in all, it's not bad - but it works much better during the scenes laden with atmosphere that exude creepy menace than the others involving histrionics or shouting prayers at sinister figures, something that multiple "Conjurings" and god knows how many "Exorcists" have made redundant. In essence, this isn't the best entry in this series but it has its moments and its finale provides a nice sendoff to these characters, assuming that a large box office draw doesn't result in a fifth entry.