Honestly, I’ve had it. I’m now all but certain there has never been a movie about exorcism that has had Christ at its heart. Thanks to Catholic author William Peter Blatty, the original Exorcist was good. Director William Friedkin deserves credit for a fine assist. It comes close but misses. No reverence.
I asked Grok3 to list all the movies about exorcism. It hedged a bit:
While it’s impossible to list every motion picture ever made about exorcism due to the vast number of obscure, international, and low-budget films produced worldwide (including many direct-to-video releases), below is a comprehensive compilation drawn from major film databases, critic rankings, and horror genre resources.
It’s almost comforting to see an AI bot use the word “impossible.” In five seconds, it churned out a 1200-word list with descriptions of 51 films. Despite how it sometimes feels to me, this proved I haven’t seen them all. The Grokster ended helpfully: “If you’d like expansions on specific eras, countries, or sub-themes (e.g., non-Christian exorcisms), let me know!”
Oh, no! I don’t want that. I’m just here to say ave atque vale to the Conjuring franchise that, in some ways, set a standard both high and low.
There are nine films in what is now called The Conjuring Universe. Why do producers add “Universe” to their sequel-isms? To make lofty what is repetitive and often banal? Perhaps they don’t care for the actual universe they’re living in.
This franchise consists of four films in the main series: The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021), and The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025). Additionally, there was Annabelle Comes Home (2019), which also features the Universe’s main protagonists, Ed and Lorraine Warren. That means four Conjuring films are Warren-less. I sort of reviewed #s 1 and 2 here.
The thing is this: Patrick Wilson (as Ed) and Vera Farmiga (as Lorraine) are very fine performers. (Both can sing, by the way, Mr. Wilson especially well.) It’s a rare actor who doesn’t sign on to some projects for no reason other than the paycheck. For Last Rites, Wilson and Farmiga have been doing a kind of Conjuring farewell tour, complete with a New York Times interview (“Horror’s Mom and Dad Say Goodbye to the ‘Conjuring’ Movies”), but I suspect they’re relieved, paychecks notwithstanding. And I’m relieved, because one hates to see talent wasted.
Anyway, on to The Conjuring: Last Rites, which is the burden I carry (lightly) today. It cost $55 million to make and has already brought in more than $400 million worldwide. (The current #1 in the world in an animated feature, Ne Zha 2. I didn’t know there was a Ne Zha 1, but #2 has hauled in a respectable $2 billion, although a mere $23 million in the US of A. The are a lot of people in China. Still, those Chinese communists sure know how to pick our American pockets.)
The Warrens were real people. I don’t know if they were either entirely sane or honest (possibly sane if dishonest), but they catapulted to fame in 1975 via a case known as the Amityville Horror (books, movies, collectibles, sequels), and the Warrens were just getting started.
It must be mentioned, however, that the whole Amityville shebang was a tissue of lies, which we know because the attorney who represented the haunted Long Island family – and netted them several hundred thousand dollars from book and movie deals – later admitted they made it all up with a writer and a couple of bottles of wine. But The Warrens – he died in 2006, she in 2019 – always maintained it was all true.
The Warrens were Catholic. People in Connecticut, where they lived, have attested to the Warrens’ regular Mass attendance. The estimable Jimmy Akins has suggested that, as paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine may have consulted with exorcists. They may have been nice folks. But neither of the Warrens was a priest, so they were not and could not be exorcists for the Roman Catholic Church.
As to the “new” movie, the first sentence of the Hollywood Reporter review likely has it just right: “It’s not just the floorboards that are creaky in the ninth entry in the venerable Conjuring horror franchise.”
Look, let I must be honest: I haven’t seen this movie! As we used to say when I was a kid about the things we’d come to detest, if I never see another movie about an exorcism, it’ll be too soon. And this is the first time I’ve written about a movie without watching it.
I am certain that if I went to see The Conjuring: Last Rites, there would be the requisite eerie music, shocked faces, jump scares, and all the other audio, visual, directorial, and editing manipulations that might even make me drop my popcorn.
But I will not go!
What I will do – lonely voice crying in the wilderness – is plead with some young Catholic filmmaker to dig deeper than even Blatty and Friedkin did and portray the heartbreak of possession . . . and the joy of release from its satanic tortures, and, for the love of God!, show the love of God.
It must be an exorcism verified by the Church. Can nobody do justice to Fr. Gabriele Amorth’s work? These special-effects-driven exorcism movies threaten to turn this holy rite into nothing more than a ludicrously unbelievable subgenre of Hollywood horror, and not a very important one. When that happens (if it hasn’t already), the rite of exorcism and the office of exorcist may become a joke. The line between horror and humor is thin.
Jesus cast out demons (Matthew 8, Mark 1 & 5, and Luke 4 & 8). But he also gave his Apostles the power, which they used (Matthew 10:1, 8; Mark 6:7, 13; Luke 9:1-2, 6, and 10:17-20; Acts 5:16, 16:16-18, and 19:11-12). Surely, we have such modern apostles! If not, Hollywood, please, tell those Biblical stories!
