Much has been said in recent years that going to the movies has become an event. Tickets are expensive, streaming is popularized, and it takes something truly attractive to capture the audience’s attention. After all, a person needs to leave home, find a convenient showtime, pay good money for the ticket, and sit in the dark for two hours. An event movie, as it’s been called, tries to justify all that effort. It’s the surprise cameo in the Marvel universe, Tom Cruise’s realistic stunts and, of course, the collective scares in a horror film like the new The Conjuring: Last Rites.
Premiering this Thursday, the 4th, the feature film promises to be the final adventure of Ed and Lorraine Warren on the big screen. In other words, Warner Bros. “guarantees” it’s the last movie with Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as the two paranormal investigators — but by no means ends the franchise entirely. It’s a farewell to two iconic characters in recent horror cinema, with the first story hitting theaters in 2013. Over 12 years, this main franchise grossed over $800 million. That may seem small compared to other blockbusters, but it’s huge for a horror film.
Story of The Conjuring: Last Rites
To honor this final story, The Conjuring: Last Rites follows the Warrens in the biggest challenge of their careers. Their daughter Judy (Mia Tomlinson) has grown up and begins to interact differently with the supernatural threats around her. Likewise, these threats begin to see Judy in a different way. At this moment, a cursed object — a particularly bizarre mirror — resurfaces in the lives of the Warrens and a quiet American family. How to face this haunting? What to do now?
Directed by Michael Chaves (of The Conjuring 3 and the dreadful The Curse of La Llorona) and written by Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, the film doesn’t bring anything truly special to this last story. Despite discussions about the Warrens’ legacy, even leaving room for Warner Bros. to do something with Judy in the future, the film feels like just another chapter in the couple’s lives. Claiming it’s a “dangerous threat” already feels repetitive.
After all, if you look closely, every main Conjuring film follows the same story: a family unfortunately brings a cursed object into their home, the Warrens are called, they resist for a while, declare it’s a very, very strong demon, face the entity, the house shakes, and they come out victorious. That’s it, it never changes. It may work for one or two films, but four? Worse — many of the spin-offs, like The Nun, Annabelle, and The Curse of La Llorona, follow the same formula.
It’s as if it’s always the same story, just reformulated to include new demons, possessed objects, and unsuspecting families. The same script formula, just adapted.
More of the same, again
And here comes the central question about event films. Fine, The Conjuring avoids some of the silliness Marvel has introduced in recent years. Thankfully, there’s no villain reunion or anything like that.
But the film seems content with being a story for audiences to get scared in theaters, absorb a plot without much creativity, and leave without thinking too much. They’ll just repeat things like “it’s really heavy, lots of scares” and so on. The Conjuring: Last Rites seems satisfied with being just a repetitive film. It’s for audiences to find what they’ve known for 12 years.
And the future?
Sure, The Conjuring: Last Rites can entertain, scare, and so on — I can already picture groups of teenagers in theaters laughing at how their friends got spooked. But it’s also important to question today’s cinema through a release like this: lacking creativity, boldness, anything. It’s a movie that just repeats itself. Like a scratched record, stuck, playing the same note for an audience that doesn’t want anything different.
Most likely, The Conjuring: Last Rites will do well at the box office. It will probably get close to the $300 million the franchise usually hits. In a year full of major horror releases, like Sinners, Weapons, and Bring Her Back, this new (and final) Warren chapter only makes us question what cinema has become in recent years. Is this the path? Not taking risks seems to have become the studios’ mantra, while bold horror films like those do well. Hopefully, Hollywood realizes that event films aren’t everything. Good stories still make the difference between just another release and being one of the year’s best movies.
