I saved The Conjuring: Last Rites for Halloween

What a disappointment. What a trashy way to send off the only two people that literally carried this franchise.

And what a waste of a Halloween movie night.

Patrick and Vera are - and always will be - amazing. I love their chemistry, they were the perfect match for this series. And that's about all I have to say on the bright side.

But the movie, man. What a s-show, everything scrambled all over the place. I'd even say it's worse than the last Conjuring, which is frankly kind of hard to top off. Everything felt so cheap, embarrassing at times, especially story-wise. I get that it is cool to sometimes break the rules you've established, especially in a universe built over a decade. I also get that these rules have been clearly abused into oblivion and neglected in spin-offs, but what I got from the previous Conjuring movies is that at least they tried to abide by them.

What bothered me mildly was the nonsensical behaviour of the characters. The way Judy knew things that could've sped up the whole investigation, from how Father Gordon died to the sightings and attacks she's experienced. Not sure if the character was supposed to seem dumb, but they made Judy extra stupid, unbelievably stupid at times - take the "Judy, come upstairs" scene, for example. She goes up, definitely not finding her mother. She goes even further into the attic, fully aware that there's a haunting taking place, and despite still not finding her mother, she proceeds to isolate herself in the said attic. The action takes place, whatever, she somehow manages to get down from the attic - only for her to fall to the voice mimicking trick YET AGAIN, JUST A COUPLE MINUTES AFTER THE FIRST INSTANCE. What a joke of a script.

Oh, and while at this, let's talk about the eternal milking cow - Annabelle. Because this is the respect the fans get, of course. For those of you that are new here, Annabelle was for the OGs what Valak was for newcomers - pop it in and let the money flood. Not sure if your movie goes right? You can simply show a split second of Annabelle and people will cheer up in the cinema. Your movie is shit? Well, have you seen the creepy nun? It's Valak! Uuuh, creepy nun.

The only creepy i found in this movie is the never-ending corporate greed, my friends. We went from wholesome scenes, family development, intriguing stories ans iconic jumpscares to priests commiting s-cide in churches, randomly possessed by the unnamed demon (who seems stronger than all the other demons from the series combined but in the end decides that the only thing it should really posses is truly a mirror), exorcising mirrors and blatantly breaking every single possible rule established by the same universe in regards to how to get rid of demons. And, of course, because they knew the movie is trash - GIANT Annabelle, everyone!

The outro was absolutely hard to sit through. Bringing the families from past movies to wedding felt cheap, as they once again tried to monetize on nostalgia. To be honest, seeing their faces made me realise how shit the current movie is compared to the first two. Also, trying to make the Warrens believable irl at the end was disgusting. Yeah, please promote scammers, try your best to make the audience feel bad for them. I love Patrick's Ed and Vera's Lorraine, I don't have any love for their real counterparts. I love horror movies and these two actors managed to bring life into this "based on real events" universe, but instead of pushing your bs through some lines of texting in the ending in order to "honour" the departure of our beloved actors and the not so beloved irl counterparts, maybe you could've actually focus on making a genuinely good movie and not just another boring, senseless, tasteless, forgettable and underwhelming waste of time.

Such a waste. Thank you A24 for existing, thank you Wan for the greats, this series is done, dead and burried. I wish i could pretend this whole franchise consists of the first two conjurings and one annabelle movie, but sadly that's not the case. You have 3 good movies against many, many more trash ones. And this last Conjuring is definitely up there with La Llorona and the Nun(s).