The Conjuring 4: The Last Rites (2025)

Evil has no escape.

This is the chilling promise at the heart of The Conjuring 4: The Last Rites, a film that brings audiences back into the terrifying world of Ed and Lorraine Warren, the legendary paranormal investigators portrayed by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. This time, the Warrens face a darkness more powerful, more cunning, and more personal than anything they have confronted before. The movie unfolds like a relentless storm, a descent into shadows where every flicker of light is a false hope and every whisper in the dark could be a final farewell.

The story begins in the aftermath of a harrowing exorcism in Romania. Called to assist a crumbling monastery where an ancient evil once lay buried, the Warrens believe they have triumphed over the demonic nun Valak, the presence that has haunted their past encounters. But victory proves an illusion. What they have uncovered instead is a terrifying conspiracy: Valak’s spirit has not been banished but merged with a long-forgotten cult that has existed in silence for centuries. This cult has one purpose—to finish what Valak started, to summon forth an age of unending terror where the boundaries between the living and the dead dissolve.

The film’s atmosphere is one of decay and dread. From the very first scene, audiences are drawn into a world of candlelit corridors, crumbling cathedrals, and shadow-drenched graveyards. Haunted dolls stir in their glass cases, cursed relics crack and shudder with unseen power, and a priest long thought buried is found walking among the living, possessed and whispering incantations that chill the soul. Every location pulses with the sense of history—history steeped in blood, betrayal, and unholy rites.

As the Warrens dig deeper, they begin to unravel the terrifying scale of the cult’s influence. It stretches across Europe and beyond, hidden in villages, masquerading as clergy, infiltrating holy orders. Their rituals are elaborate, their loyalty unwavering, and their leader—a figure cloaked in shadow—claims to be the vessel chosen to bring Valak fully into the world. What begins as a single investigation quickly becomes a global chase against time, with the Warrens racing to stop the cult’s deadly final ritual before the gates of Hell are opened forever.

Yet the terror is not just external. Lorraine’s psychic visions become darker and more violent. She is haunted by glimpses of her own death, scenes of blood-stained altars, and the sound of children crying in endless corridors. The visions come without warning, seizing her in moments of vulnerability and leaving her shaken. For Ed, the struggle is physical as well as spiritual. His health, long tested by years of confronting evil, begins to fail, and the cult exploits this weakness by targeting him with curses that blur the line between body and spirit. The emotional weight of their marriage becomes central to the narrative—two people bound together by love and faith, tested to their breaking point by forces that feed on doubt and despair.

Director Michael Chaves crafts The Conjuring 4 with an unrelenting pace. Each sequence builds on the last, escalating the sense of menace until the audience feels trapped alongside the Warrens. A cursed dollhouse becomes the stage for an entire family’s torment. A chapel filled with relics bursts into flames as chanting voices echo from the rafters. A morgue awakens as the dead rise, each corpse manipulated by invisible strings. The set pieces are terrifying, but they are also deeply personal—each one designed to mirror the Warrens’ greatest fears and weaknesses.

One of the film’s most haunting sequences takes place in the catacombs beneath Paris, where the Warrens pursue a lead only to find themselves surrounded by endless walls of bones. Here, Lorraine collapses into a trance, her mind dragged into a vision of the cult’s ultimate plan. In this vision, she sees Valak standing at the center of a cathedral drenched in black light, a priest’s body used as a puppet to lead the final ritual. Around the altar, the cult chants in unison, and the veil between worlds tears apart. Lorraine screams herself awake, and the Warrens realize they have only days to stop the prophecy from unfolding.

But the film also lingers on moments of quiet horror. A simple hallway where the lights flicker. A rocking chair that creaks when no one is there. The sound of a rosary breaking apart bead by bead. These subtler terrors remind the audience that evil is not always in the grand gestures—it often hides in the silence, waiting for the right moment to strike.

As the climax approaches, the Warrens uncover the cult’s true gathering place: an abandoned abbey in the heart of the Carpathian Mountains. Here, surrounded by snow-covered peaks and forests that whisper with unseen movement, the final ritual is set to take place. The abbey itself is a character—its walls lined with decayed icons, its crypts filled with the bodies of monks who once tried and failed to contain Valak’s power.

The final act is a crescendo of fear and faith. Ed and Lorraine enter the abbey armed only with their crucifixes, their prayers, and their love for one another. They face possessed priests, screaming apparitions, and the cult’s leader, who reveals himself to be nothing less than a vessel created by centuries of sacrifice. Valak’s face emerges through him, twisted and triumphant, as the ritual reaches its zenith.

The Warrens fight not only with words and relics but with their own souls. Lorraine offers herself in a desperate attempt to lure Valak’s spirit into her own body, buying Ed enough time to complete the rite of exorcism. The scene is heart-stopping, a battle of wills fought across both physical and spiritual planes. Every shadow grows teeth, every prayer is drowned in screams, and every moment feels like the last.

When the smoke clears, the abbey collapses in on itself, sealing away the cult and Valak’s power—at least for now. But the victory comes at a cost. Lorraine lies weakened, her visions leaving scars that may never heal, while Ed struggles to breathe after enduring the strain of the final confrontation. Their survival feels fragile, uncertain, as though the evil they have faced is not truly gone but waiting, patient, for its next opportunity.

The film closes with a chilling note. In a quiet room filled with relics, a doll long thought destroyed opens its eyes. A candle flickers, and a whisper fills the screen: “It is never over.”

The Conjuring 4: The Last Rites is more than just another entry in a horror franchise—it is a terrifying meditation on faith, sacrifice, and the cost of confronting darkness. It reminds us that evil adapts, waits, and evolves. And that even the strongest hearts can falter when tested by shadows that never sleep.

In theaters October 2025, this chapter promises to redefine demonic horror for a new generation.

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