The Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus for the supposedly final chapter in The Conjuring franchise has debuted, but it’s sending radically mixed messages about the fourth installment.
Critics Are Lukewarm, at Best
Currently, The Conjuring: Last Rites (in cinemas Friday) stands at a fairly respectable 63 percent positive critical consensus. That doesn’t sound too bad, but it’s the second-lowest consensus in the franchise so far after 2021’s awkwardly titled The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, which sits at a paltry 56 percent. Though an improvement over its immediate predecessor, the 63 percent consensus for Last Rites is a far cry from the critical praise heaped upon 2013’s The Conjuring (86 percent) and 2016’s The Conjuring 2 (80 percent).
Despite the 63 percent average, at this point it’s difficult to find any outwardly positive reviews for Last Rites. The Seattle Times called it “a dour send-off,” while The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the “franchise [is] clearly suffering from fatigue,” slating the film as “full of stale scares” and likening the plot structure to “a family sitcom.” Variety panned the film, calling it more of the same in a “highly derivative horror series” which “is well past its utility.” The New York Times also criticized the picture, calling it “a disappointing send-off; more an eccentric family drama than a real chiller.”
But Some Have Been Positive
The Associated Press, however, praised the film’s “combination of the franchise’s signature alchemy: saccharine family hugging and laughter combined with ankle-level blood pools.” Matt Zoller Seitz, writing for Roger Ebert’s site, was one of the few critics to give a wholly positive assessment. “The climax of Last Rites is as tense and unsettling as you want to be, but it’s also warm and inspiring,” Zoller Seitz wrote in his three-star review, “because unlike a lot of movies that sell the idea of families being stronger when they all work together, this one totally believes in it and sells it with all the skill and emotion it can muster.”
