The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) Reviews: What Critics Said

Editorial note: This is a roundup of published criticism of The Conjuring: Last Rites. Celluloid has not screened the film for this piece, and it carries no Celluloid rating. The critics are named and linked under Sources.

Is The Conjuring: Last Rites worth watching?

Critics were split: admirers of Ed and Lorraine Warren will find a warm, sincere send-off with a handful of effective scares, but many reviewers judged it bloated and routine as a horror film. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga were widely praised for their final turn as the couple. The recurring complaints are a long running time, a haunting that feels secondary to family drama and scares borrowed from earlier entries.

What is The Conjuring: Last Rites about?

Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren take on one last case, a haunting involving mysterious entities that they must confront, with the Smurl family’s Pennsylvania home at its centre. The couple’s adult daughter, Judy, and her partner, Tony Spera, are also drawn into their world. Michael Chaves directs from a screenplay by Ian B. Goldberg, Richard Naing and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick. Wilson and Farmiga return as the Warrens, with Mia Tomlinson as Judy, Ben Hardy as Tony, and Rebecca Calder and Elliot Cowan as Janet and Jack Smurl. The film runs 136 minutes and was released in September 2025, billed as the final chapter of the main Conjuring series.

What critics praised

The leads were the film’s strongest suit for most reviewers. At CinemaBlend, Eric Eisenberg considered Wilson and Farmiga’s performances a lovely final bow and valued the attention paid to the Warrens’ vulnerability and their marriage. Chris Evangelista of SlashFilm called it a sweet-natured and surprisingly funny finale, found both leads as compelling as ever and credited Tomlinson with giving the grown-up Judy real depth.

Some critics also found the horror in good working order. Evangelista judged it the best-looking Conjuring film since the first, praising striking set pieces, fairground-style jolts and the tension drawn from 1980s technology such as landlines and videotape. In Empire, Helen O’Hara felt the film balances genuine horror with cosiness, opening on a properly creepy note and keeping the scares coming, and thought its valedictory mood suited the occasion.

Where critics were divided

Length was the most widely shared complaint. O’Hara, despite her enjoyment, found the film bloated, observing that Chaves lavishes attention on everything except the plot and that the story increasingly pulls its punches to protect the Warrens, whom it treats with slightly gooey admiration. Evangelista also found it overstuffed, felt the haunted Smurl family was underdeveloped next to the families of earlier entries, and considered the effects-heavy climax muddled. He was uneasy, too, about a closing note that concedes the real Warrens were controversial while still celebrating them.

Eisenberg’s reservation was structural: for him the central case feels like an afterthought beside the domestic storyline, which invites unflattering comparisons with earlier films in the series.

The sceptics were blunter. William Bibbiani of TheWrap found the film generic and neither good nor bad as a scary movie, only slightly more successful as a conclusion, and argued that it spends much of its length setting up Judy and Tony as successors without committing to them. Jacob Oller of the AV Club saw a padded victory lap, overloaded with timelines, families and callbacks, whose competent but uninspired direction recycles creepy toys, mirrors and jump scares; he did enjoy Wilson’s warmth but felt the couple’s rapport gets lost. Joe George of Den of Geek went furthest, arguing that the film puts its religious worldview ahead of character and even scares, relies on cheap sound-driven jolts and lacks the flair James Wan brought to the early instalments.

Who is it for?

Viewers who have followed the Warrens through the series are the audience most critics had in mind, and even some detractors acknowledged the appeal of seeing the couple bow out. Those looking mainly for sustained fright may find more to agree with in the negative reviews. The film is rated R in the US and 15 in the UK. It sits among the site’s horror titles alongside another 2025 chiller, Weapons, and full cast and viewing details are on The Conjuring: Last Rites page.

The critical verdict

The consensus is mixed. Critics broadly agreed that Wilson and Farmiga give the Warrens a fitting farewell and that the film’s sincerity is its main strength. Where they parted ways was the horror: supporters found enough effective scares to justify the length, while detractors saw an overlong, familiar exercise that treats its haunting as an afterthought.