Ever since the Marvel Cinematic Universe became a pop culture titan, studios have regularly tried to create their own massive shared canons in the same vein, and while most of the efforts failed, there is a case to be made that the Conjuring Universe is the one exception. In addition to the main Conjuring series, the franchise has also spawned the Annabelle trilogy and the Nun duology (and there is also The Curse Of La Llorona, for those who want to count it).
Given this scope and success, you might think that the grand finale, the upcoming The Conjuring: Last Rites, might craft a story akin to what was pulled off in Avengers: Endgame – featuring the return of various villains to square off with Ed and Lorraine Warren – but it turns out that the director took inspiration from a different comic book blockbuster in the making of the film.
How A Logan-Esque Approach Ended Up Being Chosen Over An Avengers: Endgame Angle For The Conjuring: Last Rites
Earlier this month, I had a nice long interview with filmmaker Michael Chaves about his latest chapter in the Conjuring Universe (Last Rites follows his work on The Curse Of La Llorona, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, and The Nun II), and one thing I asked was if there was ever consideration of having the movie feature some kind of grand villain team-up – with potential appearances from Valak, The Crooked Man and more. He confirmed that it was an idea that was definitely discussed during early blue sky meetings about the project, saying,
We had a couple roundtable sessions where we were just opening up to all the ideas of what it could be. And one of them was a kind of an Endgame sort of like, 'Let's throw all the demons in there, let's kind of do everything.' And there is something about that that feels kind of natural like, 'Okay, we're gonna just do the full rogues gallery.'
There is a natural logic: The Conjuring: Last Rites picks up with Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga’s Ed and Lorraine Warren as they are getting older and nearing the end of their careers as demonologists… so what better time for a team-up attack from evil’s all-stars?
That exciting option was on the table, but Michael Chaves preferred taking cues from another capstone superhero movie: director James Mangold’s Logan. The film was designed to be the final chapter for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine (that didn’t turn out to be true, but whatever), but the approach to the story didn’t see all of his old demons come back to haunt him (if you’ll pardon the pun). Choosing not to go that route ultimately lets the focus just be on who the protagonist is in his final mission, and Chaves wanted that for the Warrens:
One of the things that I kept on coming back to is I love Logan, and I love how with Logan it has this great sense of conclusion through the characters and through this great emotional relationship. You don't have Sabertooth popping up and you don't have all of his like old like cronies, Magneto, coming after him. What I love about that movie is the villains are obviously important, but it's really secondary to this emotional journey and the emotional closure. And so I always just use that as like a north star. I wanted to have that same emotional conclusion
Instead of a villain team-up, the filmmakers instead opted to go back to basics.
Why The Haunting Of The Smurl Family Was Chosen As The Case In The Conjuring: Last Rites
Like all of the movies in the Conjuring series, Last Rites pulls from the actual case files of the real Ed and Lorraine Warren, and when the filmmakers behind the upcoming horror movie knew what they wanted to build the plot around, they found a perfect fit: the haunting of the Smurl family in West Pittston, Pennsylvania.
In an effort to find the appropriate fit, Michael Chaves, screenwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, and the producers of the movie found that the mid-1980s incident made for perfect subject matter: the timing fit, it was highly publicized, and there was plenty of scary material to work with. Said Chaves,
The reason we chose the Smurls is we wanted just to return to the haunted house kind of formula: the big family nature of it was great. That kind of gave us the opportunity to have a lot of these great terrifying encounters with different members of the family. It was also highly publicized. I mean, they were on Larry King; we have a clip from Larry King in the movie. And it was also one of the last cases of their career. That was the reason we went with Smurl case.
How will the Warrens fare when they square off with the new evil? Fans everywhere will be able to find out soon, as we are now just a little over a week away from the arrival of The Conjuring: Last Rites in theaters on September 5.
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