Credits: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 2.0.
The day after its French release on September 10, 2025, Michael Chaves closes the Conjuringverse “Phase 1” with the Warrens’ final case: the Smurl affair, Pennsylvania 1986. Around a haunted mirror, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga sign a muted farewell. Judy and Tony show up, heirs called to take up the torch. Between domestic drama and classic chills, Last Rites turns the haunted house into a theater of passing the torch.
Critical Overview
Chaves favors proximity. Fear circulates in common rooms. No escalation, a persistent melancholy. The universe rests on a few totems: a mirror, the room of artifacts, Judy’s presence. This fourth installment prefers memory to demonstration. You listen to bodies here, you count the silences. The Warrens, themselves, seem already to be drifting away.
Warning
This article mentions a few elements (mirrors, cameos) without spoiling the resolutions.
Tight Summary
Pennsylvania, 1986. A family reports phenomena. The Warrens take one last case. The mirror becomes key and threat. Judy and Tony join the investigation. The story moves at household level and closes, without fanfare, twelve years of a haunted serial.
By choosing Pennsylvania of 1986, the story sheds contemporary metaphors. It returns to the basics of American gothic. Mustard hues and creaking woodwork are present. Also, storms block the roads. The mirror reflects as much specters as the family’s unsaid. The final investigation thus resembles a vigil, midway between domestic ritual and private trial.
America in the Mirror: A Short Cultural Reading
The choice of 1986 is not decorative. It anchors the story in a domestic America where fear circulates in living rooms as much as in churches. The era evokes the rise of televangelists, the circulation of VHS tapes, and an imagination where evil slips in through objects (crosses, dolls, furniture) more than screens.
In this context, the house is not just a place: it’s a value system. The Warrens know this: each case is a negotiation between faith, method, and intimacy. The film strips that negotiation bare, favoring kitchens and teen bedrooms over cathedral basements.
The mirror concentrates these tensions. It reflects family masks, doubles the silences, and calls for staging that cares for axes and expectations. Chaves sticks to it: terror comes less from absolute strangeness than from a daily life quietly disturbed.
This cultural reading doesn’t overload the story, it colors it. In the end, Last Rites seems less interested in demonstration than in the persistence of a world—an intimate America confronting its ghosts as a family.
Grammar of Fear: Sounds, Rhythms, Frames
On the sound level, Benjamin Wallfisch traces slow curves more than impacts, he supports Vera Farmiga’s breaths and Patrick Wilson’s pauses, giving each surge a gasp (rather than a mere thunderclap). Visually, Eli Born favors oblique axes, ajar doors, and backlighting that sculpts the imprints of the invisible. The editing (Plotkin/Greenberg) reserves stages: pre-tension, silence, overflow, a classic, deliberate mechanism that prefers waiting to constant shock.
If Chaves recycles some tropes (hallways, doll, priest), it’s to better vary their rhythm: a fixed shot stands as an attack, an offscreen noise plays the blue note, a mirror becomes a character. The film doesn’t invent terror; it tunes it to the whisper of an end of the road.
Necessary Epilogue or Superfluous Episode?
What does Last Rites change in the Conjuringverse? It embraces farewell and chooses restraint. Where James Wan imposed panache, lyrical dollies, and elaborate setpieces, Michael Chaves frames tighter, breathes, dismantles the showmanship. The film reconnects with the house more than with the exorcism-spectacle.
Compared to the first two installments, the momentum is smaller, the virtuosity less flashy. Against Conjuring 3, more procedural, this entry gains in intimacy: Judy becomes compass, Tony a discreet guardian. You lose detonations but gain tenderness.
Necessary epilogue or episode too many? Neither peak nor bottom-shelf. Last Rites has the humility of a closing chapter: no mythological escalation, a farewell it owns. One might regret a lack of reinvention. Still, it offers a coherent, almost modest gesture. It favors trace over bang.
In the horror landscape of 2010–2025, the film sits between allegories of grief and trauma and the never-ending sagas. It occupies a middle ground. Less sharp than auteur pieces, more polished than run-of-the-mill fare. At a time when Hollywood closes franchises (Halloween Ends, Insidious 5) and splits its audience, Last Rites opts for restraint.
Cast and Crew: Cast & Craft
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga play restraint more than showmanship; their looks provide continuity for a universe twelve years old. Around them, Rebecca Calder and Elliot Cowan give the Smurls a social texture (house too small, wavering faith). The cameos (from Lili Taylor to Frances O’Connor, Mackenzie Foy to Madison Wolfe, Shannon Kook-Chun) map a sentimental cartography of the Conjuringverse: faces that come to pay respects.
On the department heads side, Eli Born continues the visual material of The Nun II with warmer lighting, 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 contemporary frenzy.
Actors: Emotional Compass
Patrick Wilson never made Ed Warren a pure crusader. Here, he offers a weary, nearly wobbling version: heavy shoulders, measured gestures, a voice that lowers instead of thunders. This humanity is matched and reignited by Vera Farmiga: the actress plays listening and second sight as craft—controlled breathing, a gaze that takes in before naming. Together they form a duo where belief is never a slogan but a balance.
Opposite them, Mia Tomlinson makes Judy a quiet magnet. Her restrained performance refuses excess: doubt surfaces, fear circulates, decision eventually lands. She doesn’t inherit the myth by decree; she learns it as she goes, which recenters emotion and shifts the drama. Ben Hardy, as Tony Spera, brings a gentle pragmatism: no bravado, but the steadiness of a keeper who tidies, archives, and watches over.
The Smurl family—Rebecca Calder, Elliot Cowan, Kíla Lord Cassidy, Beau Gadsdon—offers a social counterpoint. They aren’t cardboard cutouts; they hold the screen through weariness. Also, their faltering faith and attachment to an overcrowded house define them. The cameos sprinkle franchise memory: more than a wink, a weaving. There’s a sense each case opens onto another, like a serial novel.
This tightened ensemble gives the film its composure. If the horror remains classic, it’s the acting—looks, silences, hands—that guides the viewer like a compass.
Verified Backstage (shooting, budget, tribute)
Shooting took place in London and Atlanta, from 09/16/2024 to 10/21/2024, budget ≈ $55M. The end credits dedicate a tribute to Dan Rivera (New England Society for Psychic Research), a figure linked to the Warrens’ museum, a gesture that repositions the film within the memory of a community of demonologists.
Reception: Bittersweet Farewells
As for French viewers, on 09/11/2025, Conjuring: The Hour of Judgment shows 2.9 / 5 on AlloCiné: the Wilson/Farmiga duo praised, recurring reservations about renewed scares and the intensity of frights. The press salutes a farewell to the couple more than a formal revolution. Moreover, this score matches the work’s twilight ambition.
Media Timeline: Where To Watch Next?
In France, the first paid window remains Canal+ (≈ 6 months after theatrical). For SVOD, the window is generally ≥ 15 months (subject to change per 2025 agreements), making a Netflix arrival unlikely before late 2026. Max (Warner Bros. Discovery’s platform, launched in France in 2024) and Canal+ should prioritize distribution across successive windows.
Conjuringverse: Max Series and Saga Films
In the industry, New Line closes one cycle to relaunch another. “Phase 2” looks to be a refocusing: heirs, artifacts, singular cases. The Max series led by Nancy Won has, on paper, two trump cards: the room of objects as recurring set and a procedure alternating “case of the week” with long arcs. Two things must be preserved: time—let the fear build—and texture—the sounds, wood, fabrics that form the franchise’s identity.
On faces, nothing rules out Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson appearing as occasional totems. The likeliest core remains a Judy/Tony duo, an ideal lab to test transmission. That avoids mimicking the older couple’s marital epic. If the series resists fan-service, it could offer the exploration cinema—pressed by box office—always postpones.
Our Verdict on Conjuring 4
Not a horror triumph, but a genuine twilight. The Hour of Judgment bets on attachment: looks, breaths, clasped hands. By opening its last file, the saga mostly closes a family album. Those seeking total shock will be disappointed; those who cherish the Warrens will find a stylistic figure: the farewell.
Data Box
- Title: Conjuring: L’Heure du jugement (The Conjuring: Last Rites).
- Running Time (France): 2 h 15. Rating: 12+ (restricted under 12).
- Release Dates: US Sept 5, 2025 / France Sept 10, 2025.
- Box Office (opening): $83M US; $187–194M worldwide (varies by source).
- Budget: ≈ $55M.
- Case: Smurl (1986), motif: mirror.
- Department Heads: Eli Born (cinematography), Gregory Plotkin & Elliot Greenberg (editing), Benjamin Wallfisch (music).
- Media Timeline (FR): Canal+ ≈ 6 months, SVOD ≥ 15 months, likely priority Canal+ / Max.
- Conjuring Saga: > $2.2–2.4B total since 2013.
Cast & Craft Sidebar: Cast and Crew (Quick Reference)
Director: Michael Chaves, already at the helm of Conjuring 3 and The Nun II.
Producers: James Wan, Peter Safran.
Writers: 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.