The Conjuring: love meets the devil
Mostly, horror movies are about running away from monsters. In The Conjuring series, it is about a couple who run toward the monsters together.
Ed and Lorraine Warren spent twelve years and nine movies showing us something unusual. A functional marriage within a horror franchise. Whereas other films gave us jump scares, crooked houses with weird basements, and creepy dolls, this series gave us two people who loved each other while fighting demons together, Ed would walk into hell for Lorraine, and she would drag him back out.
The franchise went wild after Annabelle got three movies, The Nun got two, and even La Llorona got involved as well, but the heart always stayed with the Warrens. Watching them hold each other’s hands before an exorcism hits different than watching a possessed kid spin their head around. They based everything on real Warren case files, which sounds kind of boring but actually made it scarier.
Last Rites cranks everything up by making it personal. The demon they are facing has been hunting their daughter Judy since before she was born. Retire from hunting ghosts and immediately watch one hunt your kid. That’s the ultimate nightmare for them. Set in 1986 with a cursed mirror and a haunted house, this final movie asks, what happens when the fight is about family, not strangers? The Warrens always saved others. This time, they’re saving their own.
Now it’s ending with Last Rites. No sequel announcements, no reboot plans. Just a proper ending, which feels brave when every franchise these days refuses to die.The Conjuring proved something simple: horror works better when you care about the people being haunted, and maybe true love really can conquer evil, or at least survive it. After nine films of darkness, that’s the warmest legacy this series could leave behind.
