The Conjuring returns with a farewell in its voice
Two minutes of footage and a decade of dread comes rushing back. The new trailer for The Conjuring: Last Rites doesn’t just tease another haunting; it hints at a goodbye. Arriving in theaters on September 5, 2025, the fourth main entry in New Line’s supernatural juggernaut puts Ed and Lorraine Warren on what’s framed as their final — and most dangerous — case.
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga slip back into the Warrens’ well-worn dynamic, the steady heartbeat of a universe that’s spun off nuns, dolls, and demons into one of modern horror’s most dependable brands. The title alone carries a heavy promise. “Last Rites” suggests closure, a reckoning with old ghosts, and the emotional fallout of lives spent in rooms where the temperature always drops a few degrees too low.
Michael Chaves returns to the director’s chair after steering The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and expanding the universe with The Nun II. His calling card has been textured, shadow-heavy tension, where silence sits like a threat. Here he’s backed by New Line Cinema, Atomic Monster, and The Safran Company, with Warner Bros. Pictures handling distribution — the same pipeline that turned this series into a global staple.
The writing team blends franchise veterans and fresh blood. David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick — who helped shape The Conjuring 2 and The Devil Made Me Do It — teams with Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing, the duo behind the unnerving The Autopsy of Jane Doe. Story credits go to Johnson-McGoldrick and James Wan, who co-created the franchise’s original tone: domestic spaces turned hostile, faith tested in the dark.
Rounding out the cast are Mia Tomlinson, Ben Hardy, Steve Coulter, Rebecca Calder, and Elliot Cowan. Coulter’s presence signals a return to clerical counsel amid spiritual warfare, while the newcomers add uncertainty — a useful tool when the audience thinks it knows how a Conjuring case unfolds.
The technical bench is built for sustained unease. Cinematographer Eli Born, who collaborated with Chaves on The Nun II, shoots with a gothic sensibility that suits the film’s English setting. The score is by Benjamin Wallfisch, whose recent work toggles between orchestral dread and electronic pulse; expect strings that creep, then stab. The film runs a robust 135 minutes and carries an R rating — a combination that suggests patient buildup, sharper shocks, and room for the Warrens’ relationship to breathe between hauntings.
The location helps, too. Filming in Knebworth, Hertfordshire, gives the film a lived-in British gothic texture — old wood, older stone, and a sense that history refuses to stay buried. It’s not just a backdrop; it’s a character that creaks at inopportune times.
What the trailer signals — and what it leaves unsaid
The trailer’s rhythm is classic Conjuring: hushed inquiries, a quickening metronome of images, then a snap into panic. You get the sense of religious ritual colliding with something that doesn’t fear sacraments, and of Lorraine’s visions pulling her where no one else can go. It’s cut to sell dread over spectacle — the franchise’s sweet spot — and it leans on the chemistry between Wilson and Farmiga, which remains the series’ secret weapon.
“Final case” is doing a lot of work here. It raises the stakes for the Warrens as people, not just demon hunters. The best entries have always been love stories with poltergeists, and the trailer positions that bond as both shield and target. If this is the end of their mainline arc, it reads as an earned exit rather than a marketing hook.
Early reviews are already positive, pointing to a confident return to atmospheric horror over pure jump scares. That tracks with Chaves’ recent form and with the franchise’s roots. The mainline Conjuring films have each topped $200 million worldwide, and the wider universe has cleared the $2 billion mark — traction built not on bloodshed, but on precision: long takes, creeping sound design, and a faith-versus-fear framework that gives the scares shape.
The release date is savvy. Early September has been prime real estate for studio horror for years — it’s when audiences are ready for fall chills and word of mouth can actually build. The Nun dominated that corridor in 2018, and The Nun II found its audience there last year. Slotting Last Rites into that same window suggests confidence in legs, not just an opening-weekend jolt.
Behind the scenes, the producer pairing of James Wan and Peter Safran is business as usual — and that’s a good thing. Wan’s fingerprints ensure continuity of tone, while Safran’s stewardship has kept the universe coherent even as it branched into spinoffs. The Hayes brothers’ character creations still anchor the storytelling, even as new writers trade in fresh scares.
What about the rating and runtime? R gives the filmmakers permission to let terror play out without pulling punches, and 135 minutes implies ambition. Expect an A-plot possession or haunting wrapped around a B-plot about the cost of this work on a marriage, with room for investigative beats that feel methodical rather than rushed.
The craft pieces seem designed to support that approach. Born’s lighting tends to carve faces out of darkness instead of flooding rooms with clarity, which makes ordinary spaces feel treacherous. Wallfisch’s music often does the same thing sonically — hovering in a low register before spiking when you least want it to. Together, that can turn even a simple walk down a corridor into a set piece.
For longtime fans, the question is whether you need a franchise rewatch. You don’t. The Conjuring films play as self-contained stories. But it helps to remember the emotional ledger: The Conjuring (2013) established the Warrens’ bond under duress; The Conjuring 2 (2016) tested Lorraine’s limits; The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) pushed the couple into a courtroom-adjacent narrative while keeping faith at the center. Last Rites looks poised to thread those themes together.
The trailer also suggests a return to moody English interiors rather than the sunlit suburban dread of some spinoffs. That choice matters. The franchise has always worked best when the house feels complicit — when the architecture seems to lean in, listening. Knebworth’s Tudor-Gothic bones make that easy.
On the business side, Warner Bros. is back in a familiar lane, distributing a brand that needs no introduction. The social traction around the trailer — the quick shareability of its imagery and the built-in debate around “final case” — gives the studio an easy runway: a teaser that stokes speculation, a main trailer that widens the audience, then targeted spots that sell Wilson/Farmiga to general moviegoers who might have skipped the spinoffs.
If you’re scanning for franchise breadcrumbs, expect nods rather than detours. The Conjuring films are most effective when the Warrens’ case file stays in focus. Easter eggs will likely be there for the faithful, but the core story appears to be a straight shot: a haunting that strikes at the couple’s limits, and a ritual whose outcome isn’t guaranteed.
And that title — Last Rites — lingers. Maybe it’s the end of the Warrens’ cinematic chronicles, maybe it’s a promise of reinvention. Either way, the framing gives this chapter a gravity the trailer seems eager to earn. For a series built on tension, the quietest sound in the footage might be the loudest promise: this time, the cost could be everything.