[EXPRESSO] The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) | The Warrens

As i guess many did, i approached Conjuring Last Rites with tired obbligation, and i’m sad to say the movie just gave off that very same vibe in return.

Yes, i basically gave up expecting much from the series after the spinoffs and James Wan not directing anymore, but this is the final installment of the Conjuring series (and its cinematic universe, for spoiler heavy reasons), i do expect a better baseline of quality for these.

So this feels like an extra disappointing and limp finale, but first plot.

Final Rites goes back to chronicle the Warren’s last case, about an entity haunting the Smurl family in Pennsylvania, 5 years after they basically retired to do university work and live a normal middle aged life with their young adult daughter, whom also seems to share her mother’s ability to sense spirits…

While the series is mostly focused on the characters more than gore or blood, Final Rites takes it way too far as the Warren’s plotline is an overly long soap opera-ish slice of life mostly detached from the Smurl haunting, with the movie taking forever to become what you wanted to begin with, and when it finally does its incredibly underwhelming.

To say nothing of the final reveal that tethers between making some sense and being a cheap, stupid, frustrating arsepull because they couldn’t think of anything else, maybe.

I honestly personally enjoyed it even less than The Nun 2 (still more than La Llorona), the only reasons this one doesn’t score lower is because of the great performances by the cast, (especially by Farmiga and Wilson as the Warrens), the residual characterization work and the fact there’s a sense of finality to it.

Even though i do hope this is the actually the end for mainline Conjuring films.

[EXPRESSO] The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim (2024) | Anime Lord Of The Mononoke Rings

Disclaimer: i haven’t really followed/properly engaged with the Lords Of The Rings IP basically since… the original film trilogy.

But yes, when WB puts out in theathers an animated feature lenght Lords Of The Rings movie directed by Kenji Kamiyama (GITS: Stand Alone Complex, Eden Of The East, Napping Princess, GITS Stand Alone Complex 2045, Blade Runner: Black Lotus) in anime style, my interest is EXTREMELY piqued.

Taking place 183 years before the original film trilogy, the story concerns the destiny of the Helm House, as Helm Hammerhand suffers from internal strife and is then attacked by the wild tribes in the region, united by a vengeful man named Wulf, that leads them to war, with the Helm princess Hera at the forefront, eventually forced to hole themselves in the fortress of Hornburg, that would become known as Helm’s Deep.

It’s a weird combination because there’s a lot of might and barely any magic or fantasy stuff in this LOTR animated film, the animation by Sola Entertaiment (a not so random but still weird choice) it’s honestly kinda lackluster, as they have 2D animation overlayed on CGI backgrounds that opt for some kind of high fidelity “realism”, when it’s not just cheap 3D CG, or 3D CG passing as 2D animation, with a very inconsistent quality and the feeling this was kinda rushed.

The characters being so and so and the story having to retrofit and connect with later LOTR events don’t help, but i will say direction is quite solid, even with the animation issues and uneven quality it does deliver on the spectactle and pomp, it’s still enganging and very entertaining that its long runtime doesn’t bog it down.

A decent movie, even if it’s a weird yet familiar attempt to mine the LOTR IP to the bone.

[EXPRESSO] The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) | Pacino Panic

I’ll be honest, once i heard the third Conjuring main installment was gonna be handled by the director of Curse Of La Llrona (the 2019 one), Michael Chaves…. my expectations dropped like a lead baloon. Sorry, but they did, even with Wan involved… not in writing the screenplay. MH.

Now that the movie it’s finally in theathers….let’s go over the plot, first, instead.

In the 80s the Warrens (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) are investigating a new case of demon possessions and the like, which involves a man accused of killing his landlord by slashing him 22 times with a knife, and during the trail the Warrens – for the first time in American law’s history – try to negotiate a reduction by posing (and trying to prove as far as they can) the man was under demonic possession, uncovering another occult force along the way.

Let’s be brutally honest: this IS the underwhelming follow-up, it’s exactly that, not strictly bad, but just uninspired, going through the motions big time, with the best parts being hold-overs from the previous movies, in particular the Warrens’ characters, nothing that this movie can claim to have created. What is new is clearly an inferior redo of the Conjuring as a whole, not just with Chaves’ direction being ridden of limp, almost ineffectual jumpscares, but also the script (which really makes you miss Wan), made worse by the obvious “tricks” to make this one reach the 2 hours mark.

It’s disappointing, and a shame because you almost could see a better movie coming out of it if handled by more experienced people, but that movie didn’t happen in reality. Still better than The Nun or La Llorona, but come on, you reasonably expect more than just that from a mainline installment of this franchise.