How ‘The Conjuring: Last Rites’ Director Michael Chaves Stayed True to the Real-Life Smurl Haunting [Interview]

The Nun II and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It filmmaker Michael Chaves is back in the director’s seat to close out the main Conjuring franchise as we know it with the final chapter, The Conjuring: Last Rites.

Last Rites, releasing in theaters on September 5, 2025, draws inspiration from the real-life Smurl Family Haunting for a case that sees Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga making their final bow as paranormal investigating couple Ed and Lorraine Warren. Considering they’ll be joined by Mia Tomlinson and Ben Hardy, who portray Ed and Lorraine’s daughter Judy Warren and her boyfriend, Tony Spera, it’s safe to say that this particular haunting gets very personal for the Warrens.

The haunting is also one of the most sensationalized and well-known of the Warrens’ real-life case files. That it’s so well documented, including a 1991 made-for-TV movie, makes it trickier when it comes to keeping audiences on their toes and crafting nightmarish surprises.

When approaching the horror of The Conjuring: Last Rites and the haunting itself, Michael Chaves turned to a primary source on the final chapter’s central case.

“With the Smurl case, we actually worked with the Smurl sisters,” Chaves tells Bloody Disgusting. “They came on early on as we were developing the script, into pre-production, then through production. There was a movie called The Haunted, which was based on a book, and it’s funny because that was actually James Wan’s introduction to the Warrens. It was the first time that he learned about the Warrens, and that was actually a movie that [the Smurls] really didn’t like.”

Chaves continues, “They had a lot of issues with it, and I was like, ‘What can I do in telling your story?’ And they said, ‘Don’t make that movie again.’ Not to comment on the filmmaking or any of that, I think that they just didn’t feel like it was true to their story. They don’t feel like it really listened to what they experienced, and that was the big thing with this. In every way possible, we really tried to ground it in their experience and based on things that they had gone through. That really fueled so much of the story.”

One notable difference from the Smurl haunting, however, is the inclusion of an antique mirror tied to the Warrens.

Chaves wants audiences to take note: “This is the Smurl case, but there’s also the mirror. It was not in the Smurl house. That is another case of theirs. That mirror is real. It exists. If you stay to the very end, there’s something there. Obviously, we had to weave that in and then weave in the Warren story. So, it was a kind of juggling act of all those things.”

Beyond honoring the accuracy of the Smurls’ experience, Chaves had the unenviable task of finding new ways to scare audiences for the fourth main installment of the series. The filmmaker looked to the previous films and found a commonality that helped with Last Rites’ scare-crafting.

Chaves explains, “It’s tricky. It’s always a trick. It’s funny because the Conjuring movies also have a certain language and a certain style. I think that there is something in the scares that is very playful, by its nature. And I think that almost the thesis of the DNA of the movie goes back to, honestly, the Clap game. As with everything in the series, it is rooted in that sense of play and that these entities and these darker forces are trying to lure us in with games, and they’re luring us in with toys, like Annabelle being a doll. When you’re doing the scares, I think you’re always trying to push the boundaries a little bit. There’s obviously a lot more blood in this movie than there was in previous Conjuring movies.”

The filmmaker also found scare inspiration from the period itself; Last Rites is set in 1986, just five years after The Devil Made Me Do It.

“So much of the first film is rooted in the horror movies of the ’70s, and in The Changeling and The Exorcist,” Chaves notes. “Obviously, we wanted to return to that and keep that DNA, but I also wanted a little bit of the flavor of the ’80s. We actually shot on C-Series Anamorphic lenses, these great vintage lenses that they used on Poltergeist and on Alien. And so, it kind of had a little bit of the texture of the ’80s. I think also even just the bloody sink, a little bit of a nod to The Shining and Nightmare on Elm Street, and that language. These movies are always referencing other horror movies and horror movies of the period that they live in. So, I think that was always the basis for how we built these scares.“

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