Fittingly for a movie about demonic possession, The Conjuring: Last Rites feels crowded from the inside out: it’s as if an earnest domestic drama and a horror flick were thrashing around, trying to occupy the same running time. Neither one is able to cast the other out.

 

To be fair, there’s always been something sappy about this series, which is designed to flatter its protagonists — the married paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) — as loving, salt-of-the-earth types: Mom and Pop exorcists, criss-crossing the U.S. with Bibles in their hands and their hearts in the right place.

In real life, though, the Warrens — devout Catholics given to spreading the good word about the Church — were reviled by sceptics as scam artists, deftly peddling pseudo-science and parlaying their clients’ superstition (and their own gift for parlour tricks) into a lucrative and headline-grabbing hustle. The piece de resistance: an occult museum containing all of the “evil” trinkets confiscated during their adventures. Their rationale was that it was better to keep all these dangerous items in one place, under lock and key; for a price, of course, visitors could come by to look (but not touch).

 

A wittier, more subversive movie could play all of this metaphysical smooth talk for satirical comedy, casting the Warrens posthumously as poltergeists manipulating credulous filmmakers into burnishing their image, one cheesy B movie at a time.

 

Obviously, Last Rites is not that project: rather, it’s been conceived as a grand send-off for the characters, centring on the one case that (allegedly) they could not crack. The action is set mostly in 1986, with our heroes contemplating retirement. Lorraine is feeling the spiritual drag of having communed with the dead for so long, and Ed’s health is on a downward turn. The vibes, as they say, are bad, and even followers have stopped taking them seriously.

 

During one sparsely attended university lecture, a sarcastic undergrad asks Ed and Lorraine if they’ve seen Ghostbusters, and is disappointed to learn that they never have. It’s a loaded reference in a movie that doesn’t skimp on period signifiers and is the closest Last Rites comes to intentional comedy.

In the absence of any compelling motivation to continue with their nine-to-fives, Ed and Lorraine are focused on the fortunes of their adult daughter, Judy (Mia Tomlinson), who’s so charming you’d never guess she was born under a bad sign. Since childhood, Judy has suffered from hallucinations tied to the fraught conditions of her delivery, which involved a near-death experience (Lorraine suspects something evil may have been involved.)

Nevertheless, she’s determined to live a normal life with her new boyfriend, Tony (Ben Hardy), an ex-cop apparently unafraid of marrying into some spooky stuff.

 

This material is all reasonably engaging, if a bit on the pokey side; it’s intercut with the travails of a Pennsylvania family being terrorised in their home by sinister forces. The ostensible culprit: a massive, ornately fashioned mirror acquired for a song at a local swap meet. (It’s not a good sign that the seller was apparently very motivated to get rid of it.)

 

The question of how these two plot lines are connected — and the role that Judy will play in bridging them — is unpacked at a decidedly leisurely pace. There’s plenty of ominous portent, but fewer jolts than one might expect given the mechanical effectiveness of the film’s predecessors.

 

The first Conjuring was junky and derivative, but it was also genuinely freaky, with expertly staged set pieces courtesy of genre specialist James Wan, who has a real gift for rhythm and tone. Last Rites is directed by Michael Chaves, who doesn’t have much of a visual style, and no sense of humour — a problem when you’re working almost exclusively with clichés.

 

There’s nothing particularly frightening on offer here, and no really original imagery: a clogged drain overflowing with blood nods to The Shining without much in the way of passion. Meanwhile, the script tries to pass off all of the demonic craziness as authentic, complete with docudrama-style title cards that should be taken with extra-large shakers of salt.

 

In the end, it’s clear that the movie’s heart is with the Warrens (or its sanitised, sanctified idea of them), and it’s hard not to smile or giggle at a late wedding sequence that brings together minor characters from previous instalments for the cinematic equivalent of a group hug.

 

All’s well that ends well in the Conjuring Cinematic Universe: if only they had cut to Annabelle the doll sitting in the front row with a tissue, dabbing her painted eyes, the movie would be a camp classic.

 

5/10 YAWN

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