Talked about as one of the scariest movies released this year, The Conjuring: Last Rites tells the story of the case that caused Ed and Lorraine Warren to end their careers. Although I love the Conjuring universe and they are some of my favorite horror movies, this one, in my opinion, was not a good way to end the franchise.

I was hoping that there would be the death of an important character. I would have hoped for it to be Ed Warren, whose death was talked about in almost all of the conjuring movies before. A major plot point of the second movie was that Lorraine has been having visions of Ed’s death and I was hoping that the vision would come back in this movie.

The movie itself was a good movie if you separate it from the rest of the Conjuring universe. The action starts almost immediately, making sure you don’t get bored. The jump scares, the demons, and the eerie vibe of the whole movie made people scream in theaters.

When the movie was announced, it was almost immediately hyped up by everyone. It had people saying that this was going to be the scariest movie out of all the Conjuring franchise, including both the Nuns, Annabelles, and The Curse of La Llorona.

But the movie ended up falling short. If it was at any other point in the timeline it would have been good, maybe even great. But the fact that it was the final movie, the movie that would end it all, caused it to not be as good.

The plot line of the movie was strong. Mia Tomlinson plays Judy Warren, the daughter of Ed and Loraine, Judy Warren was a huge part in the movie. In fact, she was the reason that they went to the Smurl family home in the first place after she found out that they were being haunted, she couldn’t just let them be terrorized by the demon so she got Ed and Lorraine to follow her to the house and help the Smurl family. Some of the best jump scares and most ominous parts of the movie happened around and from Judy’s perspective.

But when they brought her into the movie, I was hoping that there would be a death or something similar to that caused by how much Ed and Loraine care about her, so one of them ended up sacrificing themselves for her. 

This didn’t end up happening. In fact only one character died in the entire movie and he did not have much screen time in general. His death did help bring the story line along, but the directors could have picked a much better and more loved character for the only death actually shown in all of the Conjuring movies

So even though I thought this movie was good on its own, as the final Conjuring movie that is going to be released, it could have been so much better and the end was very anticlimactic. 

The movie and the whole universe have a lot of parallels. Last Rites was a good movie, but the ending was not the best way to wrap the film up, just like how all of the Conjuring movies were great but the last movie was not the way to end it all.