The Conjuring: Last Rites

Directed by Michael Chaves, The Conjuring: Last Rites follows Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) as they reluctantly step out of retirement to help a Philadelphia family deal with malevolent spirits. There’s ultimately little doubt that The Conjuring: Last Rites fares best in its deliberately-paced and surprisingly engrossing first half, as Chaves, armed with Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick’s screenplay, does a terrific job of establishing and developing two parallel narratives – with the watchable atmosphere heightened by Eli Born’s stylish visuals and a smattering of appreciatively creepy scenes and set-pieces. It’s disappointing to note, then, that The Conjuring: Last Rites, saddled with a wildly (and needlessly) overlong running time, hits a palpable lull as it enters its relatively meandering midsection, and there’s little doubt, as well, that the decent-but-egregiously-familiar (and completely over-the-top) climax ensures that the pictures fizzles out to a rather distressing degree – which does, in the end, confirm the picture’s place as a decent-enough piece of work that falls right in line with its hit-and-miss predecessors.

**1/2 out of ****