CONTEXT: I put the first The Conjuring on in the background while writing this, and even though I'm generally not a fan of horror films, it's pretty darn good. It avoids splatter horror's gratuitous excesses and leans heavily into creepiness and the mystery behind the film's haunting. Totally Worth it.

Perhaps, if you've watched the rest of The Conjuring series, the Last Rites familiarity and call backs will evoke something in you; however, if you're like me, and hadn't seen any of them before this one, you'll be counting the seconds until it's over. Unfortunately, there are a lot of seconds.

Solid production value and talented performers can't save a production riddled with stock horror elements and pacing reduced to a crawl by narrative speed deserts. Until its final moments, The Conjuring: Last Rites struggles to find its rhythm, spending almost no time with the family in peril. Instead, interrupting any hints of momentum with overlong and uninteresting scenes seemingly meant to firmly establish Judy (the daughter of the main characters) and her boyfriend/future husband as franchise replacements for the retiring leads.

The real problem is that this shift in focus not only breaks the tempo but also dulls the emotional connection between the audience and the family being traumatized. It results in a film that must then rely solely on jump scares and Dutch angles to move the audience. However, unless you're the 20-something girl who was sitting next to me at the theater and who must not have ever seen a horror film before, Last Rites scares offer absolutely nothing new or innovative, and without a sufficient bond between victims and audience, how scary can some shaking luggage or flickering lights be?

The leads, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, are as dependable in their roles now as they were over a decade ago when they first inhabited the Warrens. So too, the rest of the cast does a fine job. No, the quality of the performances isn't at issue. That the characters are written so blandly, on the other hand, is.

If you've never seen any of the films in The Conjuring series, I wouldn't recommend starting with Last Rites... or finishing with it, for that matter. Do check out the one that started it all.