Last rites, according to the director [Exclusive]

This article discusses spoilers for “The Conjuring: Last Rites”.

“The Conjuring: Last Rites” was one of the scariest horror films of 2025, a claim supported by the film’s impressive box office success. Of course, this comes as no surprise, as “Last Rites” is the ninth (or tenth, depending on your count) film in the Conjuring universe, and it’s a franchise that has a proven track record of scaring people. Over the course of the series, which includes the four main “Conjuring” films, three “Annabelle” films and two “The Nun” films, there has been an unofficial competition between the various directors to see who can outdo the other when it comes to staging a spooky new setting. Ironically, director Michael Chaves was in competition not only with the likes of James Wan and David F. Sandberg, but also with himself, as he directed the last two “Conjuring” entries (including “Last Rites”) as well as “The Nun II.”

As such, Chaves has clearly become adept at distinguishing which sets work. While “Last Rites” features several moments that have the power to get under your skin, in Chaves’ opinion, there’s a clear winner among them. According to a recent conversation the director had with /Film’s Jacob Hall, Chaves’ pick for the film’s best scare is the sequence where a now-adult Judy Warren (Mia Tomlinson) tries on a dress for her upcoming wedding and is left alone in a dressing room full of reflective mirrors. There, she has a vision of a demon wearing her face, stalking and attacking her. It’s a well-staged and expertly executed frightening set piece, and it’s made all the more frightening and memorable thanks to Chaves’ cinematic techniques.

In 1947, director Orson Welles realized the hypnotic, disorienting and purely cinematic potential of a series of funhouse mirrors, using them in a classic setting for “The Lady from Shanghai.” Since then, many sequences have been created around a series of mirrored reflective surfaces, with some becoming iconic moments in their own right, such as the final fight in “Enter the Dragon.” Certainly, horror film directors have not lost sight of the fact that the experience of getting lost in the middle of a seemingly endless mirrored world is inherently frightening. Many horror films, from 1959’s “The Horrors of the Black Museum” to 2019’s “It: Chapter Two,” utilize the strange power of multiple mirrors.

It turns out that the Hall of Mirrors sequence in “Last Rites” isn’t just Chaves’ homage to cinema history. The scene is also a distillation of much of the film’s themes. The film’s plot concerns a demon living inside a “conjuring mirror” that Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) encountered during one of their first cases, allowing the demon to target their family, particularly Judy. The sequence involves an allusion to this long-time adversary, Judy’s struggle with trying to shut out her psychic abilities (per Lorraine’s advice), and the foreshadowing of Judy’s demonic possession, while also being a bizarre little moment in its own right. It’s no wonder that in the version of “Last Rites” formatted for IMAX theaters, this is an extended sequence in full IMAX format, signaling to audiences that this is a scene to watch out for.

Hall asked Chaves if he had a favorite, and he wasted no time. “I love the wedding dress mirror room sequence. It’s absolutely my favorite,” Chaves said. When Hall asked Chaves which scare in the film could be considered one of the “five scares of the Conjuring universe,” Chaves was sure to highlight several alternate sequences in the film before landing on his clear winner. As he explained:

I mean, there’s a lot of things like, in terms of getting what you pay for… The scene at the end of the bed, the succubus attack where Jack is levitated, the scene where he reveals that she’s at the end of the bed, that always gets the biggest response in the theater. So in terms of value for money, it’s such a simple moment, but it really, really works. But I keep coming back to the wedding dress mirror room sequence. I loved doing this and I think it looks great.”

Indeed, the other sequence in the film Chaves mentions, in which a succubus suddenly appears before Jack Smurl (Elliot Cowan), is easily the best and most effective jump scare in the film. Yet while it’s a fantastic jolt, the wedding dress mirror room scene stays with you long after its initial scares have passed. It’s because of its grounding in the film’s themes, its nod to cinema history, and Chaves’ prowess behind the camera, that it has such uncanny power. If it’s true that “Last Rites” is to be Ed and Lorraine’s final release, then at least it can be said that “The Conjuring” was released to resounding success on many levels.