The day after its French release on September 10, 2025, Michael Chaves closes the "Phase 1" of the Conjuringverse with the ultimate Warren case: the Smurl affair, Pennsylvania 1986. Around a possessed mirror, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga sign a muted farewell. Judy and Tony join in, heirs called to take up the torch. Between domestic drama and classic thrill, Last Rites transforms the haunted house into a theater of transmission.
Critical Overview
Chaves favors proximity. Fear circulates in common rooms. No overkill, a persistent melancholy. The universe relies on a few totems: a mirror, the artifact room, Judy’s presence. This fourth installment prefers memory to demonstration. Bodies are listened to, silences are counted. The Warrens, meanwhile, seem to be already moving away.
Warning
This article mentions a few elements (mirrors, cameos) without spoiling the resolutions.
Tight Summary
Pennsylvania, 1986. A family claims to experience phenomena. The Warrens accept one last case. The mirror becomes key and threat. Judy and Tony join the investigation. The story progresses at the level of the household and closes, without fanfare, twelve years of a haunted series.
By choosing Pennsylvania in 1986, the story unburdens itself of contemporary metaphors. It returns to the basics of American Gothic. The mustard colors and creaking woodwork are present. Moreover, storms block the road. The mirror reflects both the specters and the unspoken of the clan. The ultimate investigation thus resembles a vigil, halfway between domestic ritual and intimate trial.
America in the Mirror: A Small Cultural Reading
The choice of 1986 is not decorative. It anchors the story to a domestic America where fear circulates in living rooms as much as in churches. The era recalls the rise of televangelists, the circulation of VHS tapes, and an imagination where evil slips through objects (crosses, dolls, furniture) more than through screens.
In this context, the house is not just a place: it’s a value system. The Warrens know it: each investigation is a negotiation between faith, method, and intimacy. The film lays this negotiation bare, preferring kitchens and teen bedrooms to cathedral basements.
The mirror concentrates these tensions. It reflects family masks, doubles the silences, and invites the staging to care for the axes and expectations. Chaves sticks to it: terror comes less from absolute strangeness than from a quietly disturbed everyday.
This cultural reading does not overload the story, it tints it. In the end, Last Rites seems less interested in demonstration than in the persistence of a world, that of an intimate America facing its ghosts as a family.
Grammar of Fear: Sounds, Rhythms, Frames
On the sound level, Benjamin Wallfisch traces slow curves more than impacts, he emphasizes Vera Farmiga’s breaths and Patrick Wilson’s pauses, giving each emergence a breath (rather than a simple thunderclap). In the frame, Eli Born favors oblique angles, ajar doors, backlights that sculpt the imprints of the invisible. The editing (Plotkin/Greenberg) provides stages: pre-tension, silence, overflow, a classic, assumed mechanism that prefers waiting to constant shock.
If Chaves recycles some clichés (corridors, doll, priest), it’s to better vary their rhythm: a fixed shot serves as an attack, an off-screen noise plays the blue note, a mirror becomes a character. The film does not invent horror, it tunes it to the murmur of an end of journey.
Necessary Epilogue or Episode Too Many?
What does Last Rites change in the Conjuringverse? It embraces the farewell and chooses sobriety. Where James Wan imposed flair, lyrical tracking shots, staged set pieces, Michael Chaves frames tightly, breathes, dismantles the showiness. The film reconnects with the house more than with the exorcism-spectacle.
Compared to the first two installments, the momentum is lesser, the virtuosity less visible. Compared to Conjuring 3, more procedural, the episode gains in intimacy: Judy becomes a compass, Tony a discreet guardian. We lose in explosions what we gain in tenderness.
Necessary epilogue or episode too many? Neither a peak nor a catalog bottom. Last Rites has the humility of a closing chapter: no mythological overkill, an assumed goodbye. One might regret a lack of reinvention. However, it offers a coherent and almost modest gesture. It prefers the trace to the crash.
In the horror of the years 2010-2025, the film stands between the allegory of griefs, traumas, and the extended sagas. It thus occupies a middle ground. Less sharp than auteur objects, more polished than the run-of-the-mill. At a time when Hollywood is closing its franchises (Halloween Ends, Insidious 5) by dividing its audience, Last Rites chooses restraint.
Actors and Crew: Cast & Craft
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga play restraint more than demonstration, their looks ensure the continuity of a universe twelve years old. Around them, Rebecca Calder and Elliot Cowan give the Smurls a social texture (house too small, shifting faith). The cameos (from Lili Taylor to Frances O’Connor, from Mackenzie Foy to Madison Wolfe, Shannon Kook-Chun) draw a sentimental map of the Conjuringverse: so many faces that come to greet.
On the department heads side, Eli Born extends the visual material of The Nun 2 in warmer light, Benjamin Wallfisch signs a score of breaths and raspy strings, Gregory Plotkin and Elliot Greenberg anchor the whole to a tempo that spares the film from contemporary frenzy.
Actors: Emotional Compass
Patrick Wilson has never made Ed Warren a pure crusader. Here, he offers the tired, almost wavering version: heavy shoulders, measured gestures, voice that lowers instead of thundering. This humanity, Vera Farmiga embraces and revives: the actress plays listening and second sight as a job, controlled breathing, gaze that captures before naming. Together, they compose a duo where belief is never a slogan, but a balance.
Opposite them, Mia Tomlinson makes Judy a discreet magnet. Her performance, restrained, refuses overkill: doubt surfaces, fear circulates, decision eventually settles. She does not inherit the myth by decree, she learns it by walking, which recenters the emotion and shifts the dramaturgy. Ben Hardy, as Tony Spera, brings a gentle pragmatism: no bravado, but the constancy of a guardian, the one who organizes, archives, watches.
The Smurl family: Rebecca Calder, Elliot Cowan, Kíla Lord Cassidy, Beau Gadsdon, offers a social counterpoint. They are not cardboard cutouts, as they hold the screen through weariness. Moreover, the wavering faith and attachment to a too narrow house characterize them. The cameos sprinkle a memory of the franchise: more than a nod, a weaving. Moreover, there is the feeling that each case opens onto another, like a saga.
This tight-knit ensemble gives the film its tenacity. If the horror remains classic, it’s the acting: looks, silences, hands, that guides the viewer, like a compass.
Verified Behind the Scenes (Filming, Budget, Tribute)
Filming took place in London and Atlanta, from 09/16/2024 to 10/21/2024, budget ≈ $55M. The final credits dedicate a tribute to Dan Rivera (New England Society for Psychic Research), a figure linked to the Warrens’ museum, a gesture that places the film in the memory of a community of demonologists.
Reception: Bittersweet Farewells
As for French audiences, as of 09/11/2025, Conjuring: The Hour of Judgment shows 2.9 / 5 on AlloCiné: Wilson/Farmiga duo praised, recurring reservations about the renewal of fear and the intensity of scares. The press hails a farewell to the couple more than a formal revolution. Moreover, this rating corresponds to the twilight ambition of the object.
Media Timeline: Where to Watch Tomorrow?
In France, the first pay window remains Canal+ (≈ 6 months after theatrical release). For SVOD, the window generally ≥ 15 months (possible evolution according to 2025 agreements) makes a Netflix arrival unlikely before late 2026. Max (Warner Bros. Discovery platform, launched in France in 2024) and Canal+ should prioritize broadcasting, through successive windows.
Conjuringverse: Max Series and Saga Films
In the industry, New Line closes a cycle to better launch another. The “Phase 2” promises a refocusing: heirs, artifacts, singular cases. The Max series led by Nancy Won has, on paper, two key cards: the object room as a recurring setting, the procedure alternating "case of the day" and long arcs. It is still necessary to preserve two things: time: let fear build, and material: sounds, wood, fabrics, which make up the franchise’s identity.
In terms of faces, nothing prevents appearances by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as occasional totems. The most likely remains a Judy/Tony duo, an ideal laboratory to test transmission. This avoids mimicking the conjugal novel of the elders. If the series circumvents fan-service, it can offer the exploration that cinema, pressed by the box office, always postpones.
Our Verdict on Conjuring 4
No grand night of horror, but a true twilight. The Hour of Judgment bets on attachment: looks, breaths, hands held. By opening its last case, the saga closes above all a family album. Those who expected the total thrill will leave frustrated, those who cherish the Warrens will find here a figure of style: the farewell.
- Title: Conjuring: Last Rites.
- Duration (France): 2 h 15. Restriction: − 12 years.
- Releases: US September 5, 2025 / France September 10, 2025.
- Box office (opening): $83M US; $187–194M worldwide (according to sources).
- Budget: ≈ $55M.
- Case: Smurl (1986), motif: mirror.
- Heads of departments: Eli Born (cinematography), Gregory Plotkin & Elliot Greenberg (editing), Benjamin Wallfisch (music).
- Media chronology (FR): Canal+ ≈ 6 months, SVOD ≥ 15 months, probable priority Canal+ / Max.
- Conjuring Saga: > $2.2–2.4B accumulated since 2013.
Cast & Craft Box: cast and crew (quick references)
Director: Michael Chaves already at the helm of Conjuring 3 and The Nun 2.
Production: James Wan, Peter Safran.
Screenplay: David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Ian B. Goldberg, Richard Naing.
Cast: Patrick Wilson (Ed), Vera Farmiga (Lorraine), Mia Tomlinson (Judy), Ben Hardy (Tony Spera), Rebecca Calder, Elliot Cowan, Kíla Lord Cassidy, Beau Gadsdon. Cameos: Lili Taylor, Mackenzie Foy, Frances O’Connor, Madison Wolfe, Shannon Kook-Chun.