The Warrens Return for Hokey Finale

Almost every movie franchise arrives at the same line of questioning if it goes on long enough: Is it time to put these heroes out to pasture? The larger-than-life characters of James Bond, Wolverine and Tom Cruise have all face it in recent years. Now, the question comes for Ed and Lorraine Warren, the real-life paranormal investigators (or, upon some reading, exploitative hucksters) played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga across the “Conjuring” franchise. Their new (and allegedly final) adventure, “Last Rites,” initially finds them out of the game, lecturing sparsely attended auditoriums. Has their career given up the ghost?

Not for long. All heroes need a send-off, and Ed and Lorraine have earned one after launching a nine-film blockbuster franchise with “The Conjuring” in 2013 (that count doesn’t include 2019’s “The Curse of La Llorona,” which is not considered canon, despite some cameos and a character crossover). While “The Conjuring” has usually been good for some bump-in-the-night scares, it’s mostly been a generic, sappy series, dragged down by various bland families that the eclectic Warrens immediately upstage upon arriving to help deliver them from evil. “Last Rites” has less of that generic filler, though it delivers finale fan service in the form of a narrower focus on its marquee characters. This time, the haunted child the Warrens are investigating is their own.

The story draws from another one of the Warrens’ most publicized cases: the Smurls, a three-generation Pennsylvania family whose paranormal experiences led them on a media tour (which “Last Rites” goofily touches on by editing its actors into a Larry King interview that the real Smurls did at the time). The film takes the liberty of adding on a more direct association with the Warrens: The Smurls are haunted by a cursed mirror that the paranormal investigators first encountered at the start of their careers, just hours before the…