'Last Rites' conjures millions

The long awaited fourth movie in the Conjuring franchise, “The Conjuring Last Rites”, broke box office records on the 5th of Sept. this year, but didn’t break any new ground.

Made by New Line Cinema and directed by previous Conjuring series director Michael Chaves, the film was teased in the post credits scene in “The Nun 2”.

The film follows Ed and Lorraine Warren, very loosely based off of their real life counterparts, as they grapple with aging, their daughter growing last and their consistent connection to the supernatural. The family is forced to solve one more case all the way in Pennsylvania, based on the real life Smurl haunting the Warrens did investigate. It is revealed that the supernatural presence in the home is actually the same one they met over 20 years ago in an incredibly dangerous case. The film has taken first place as the highest grossing opening weekend for a horror movie ever, overtaking the previous ruling champion “It”.

The conjuring series have never had incredibly well thought out writing or pacing but this movie takes the cake for some of the lowest quality yet. The biggest blight plaguing the series is that it already peaked with the first two films. This movie is ninth in the universe, fourth in the main series, and is very telling of its quality.  Ever since Michael Chaves became the de facto director of the series, it's plummeted in quality. While his other conjuring movies aren’t the literal worst, he simply doesn’t have the touch that James Wan had. This movie doesn't do anything new for the series and ends up feeling slow and underwhelming. The scares are not only few and far between but they either miss the mark and seem dumb rather than scary or were good but lose their luster due to being shown in the trailers. The good ideas felt half baked, the Warrens dialogue was drab, there were characters who seemed important and then just kind of vanished from the movie and much more.

I can commend one scare with being well done, but having one decent scare in the closer to an incredibly popular horror franchise doesn't save the film.