溫子仁的《厲陰宅》系列一直以來都帶有某種矛盾性。如果將2019年的《哭泣的女人：詛咒》計算在內，這個龐大的系列總共有10部電影，這似乎是一個無關緊要的小辯論。但與同樣龐大的漫威或DC系列不同，它真正的成功之處在於對信仰和家庭的私密反思。
為什麼《厲陰宅》系列特別受歡迎？原因不難理解。這些故事圍繞著天主教信仰展開，其中，本性善良的人們面臨挑戰，他們必須在一個上帝與惡魔不僅是抽象概念，而是存在於我們物質世界的真實力量的世界中，努力維護自己的靈魂。
撇開那些詭異的玩具、被詛咒的娃娃和長角的野獸不談，《厲陰宅》的核心，雖然有些老套，但講述的是愛的力量如何抵禦邪惡的幽靈。而艾德與羅琳·華倫（分別由派翠克·威爾森與薇拉·法蜜嘉飾演）始終是這種力量的象徵。儘管現實中的華倫夫婦無疑是江湖術士和騙子，但電影中的他們是一對極其討人喜歡的夫妻，他們彼此之間的愛比生者與死者之間的界線還要堅定。
對於該系列的粉絲來說，乍看之下，【厲陰宅：最終聖事 The Conjuring: Last Rites】片頭字幕相當令人不寒而慄。這部第四集電影預告了一個對華倫夫婦生活造成「毀滅性」打擊的故事，迫使他們退出大眾視線，結束了他們的職業生涯。考慮到現實中的華倫夫婦都活到了高齡，而且他們的女兒茱蒂·斯佩拉現在經營著自己的超自然調查公司（此外，這部電影也被大肆宣傳為虛構華倫夫婦的最終章），這個片頭字幕說得好聽點是有些不溫不火。
儘管片頭的承諾有些虛假，【厲陰宅：最終聖事 The Conjuring: Last Rites】仍然成功地營造了適當的恐怖氣氛，它在單個嚇人場景的表現上遠勝於第二和第三集，也成功地回歸了溫子仁第一部《厲陰宅》的美學樂趣。編劇們巧妙地將我們帶回到華倫夫婦作為一個家庭單位的生存問題，這也是該系列首次探討這份職業可能帶來的心理負擔——不僅是對艾德和羅琳，也包括他們的女兒茱蒂（米亞·湯姆林森飾演）。畢竟，他們的一生都與鬼魂、惡魔和殺人魔靈魂有著親密接觸。
電影始於1964年茱蒂出生的那個夜晚，年輕的艾德和羅琳（分別由奧賴恩·史密斯和麥迪遜·勞洛爾飾演）從一場針對一面巨大詭異鏡子的驅魔行動中脫身，趕到醫院，並透過祈禱的力量使死去的女兒茱蒂復活。這個場景提出了女兒可能被詛咒的艱難可能性，甚至更糟的是，羅琳可能為了換取長壽而將茱蒂的靈魂獻給了魔鬼。
在電影的大部分時間裡，這個誘人的想法如同一個定時炸彈，支撐著主要情節線。導演麥可·查維斯以一種比他過去執導的該系列作品更成功、更具感染力的方式，透過有效的預兆和幾個複雜的魯布·戈德堡裝置，營造出緊繃的張力。【厲陰宅：最終聖事 The Conjuring: Last Rites】改編自據稱發生於1974年至1989年賓夕法尼亞州西皮茨頓斯默爾家族住宅的鬧鬼事件，這起事件引發了一場媒體風暴，華倫夫婦也共同撰寫了一本書。在調查這起可能的附身事件時，華倫夫婦同時也準備迎接茱蒂的未婚夫托尼（本·哈迪飾演）加入他們的家庭。
與任何一部《厲陰宅》電影一樣，「為何」的細節不如鬧鬼事件本身的機制重要，查維斯和他的團隊摒棄了在《鬼入魔》中拖累劇情的偵查工作，轉而選擇了一系列真正嚇人的定場戲。他們還巧妙地將華倫夫婦自身的經歷與斯默爾家族的經歷聯繫在一起，這使得這一章節比之前的作品更具個人色彩，也更具「毀滅性」。
在一個值得稱讚的認真系列中，【厲陰宅：最終聖事 The Conjuring: Last Rites】輕易成為最純粹的一章，它對上帝和信仰的堅持幾乎到了宗教宣傳的地步。但這種手法無疑是有效的，其高潮部分既恐怖又充滿情感共鳴。與《厲陰宅》系列過去不盡然如此的情況不同，這部電影的許多最嚇人時刻都與角色們的情感利害關係無縫連結在一起。其中一場茱蒂在試穿婚紗時被鬼魂追逐、同時面對無限鏡子的場景，是該系列中最令人屏息的驚嚇時刻之一。另外，電影後期與一個經常出現的角色有關的另一場令人極度不安的戲份，也是一次精湛的操縱。
所有這些時刻都歸結為一個貫穿這十部電影宇宙核心的問題：是透過純粹的意志力來隔絕過去的鬼魂更好，還是無畏地直視它們？對於艾德、羅琳，尤其是茱蒂來說，這個問題將伴隨他們進入人生的下一個階段，或者穿越鏡子的虛假反射，進入那未知的死亡陷阱。
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‘The Conjuring: Last Rites’ Review: A Frothy Return To First Film’s Aesthetic Pleasures
By Gregory Nussen
James Wan’s The Conjuring series has persisted as something of a contradiction. Its immense size — 10 total films if you include 2019’s The Curse of La Llorona, which seems to be a minor matter of inconsequential debate — belies a series that, unlike similarly large franchises such as Marvel or DC, really succeeds as intimate reflections on faith and family. It’s not hard to see why the Conjuring films in particular have been so popular: These are Catholic stories in which fundamentally good people are challenged to keep their souls intact in a world where God and the devil are not abstractions but real forces in our material world.
Spooky toys, cursed dolls and horned beasts notwithstanding, The Conjuring is, rather hokily, about the power of love to ward off the specter of evil. And emblematic of that power has always been Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, respectively). While the real-life Warrens undoubtedly were hucksters and snake-oil salesmen, the fictional ones are an intensely likable couple whose love for each other is far firmer than the veil between the living and the dead.
For fans of the series, then, the opening scrawl for Last Rites seems, at first glance, pretty chilling. The fourth film promises a story that is so “devastating” to the lives of the Warrens that they are forced out of the limelight, ending their careers. Given that the real-life Warrens lived well into their old age, and their daughter Judy Spera now runs her own company for paranormal investigation (and, further, that the film has been heavily marketed as the final film for the fictional Warrens), the scrawl does seem a bit tepid at best.
Despite something of a false opening promise, Last Rites is appropriately terrifying, far more successful on a scare-by-scare basis than the second or third films and a really frothy return to the aesthetic pleasures of Wan’s first Conjuring. Screenwriters Ian B. Goldberg, Richard Naing & David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick smartly return us to the question of the Warrens’ viability as a family unit, asking, for the first time in the franchise, what the psychological toll might be — not just for Ed and Lorraine but for their daughter, Judy (Mia Tomlinson), too. This is, after all, a lifetime spent intimately handling the ghosts, demons and murderous spirits.
The film begins the night of Judy’s birth, in 1964, when a young Ed and Lorraine (Orion Smith and Madison Lawlor, respectively) extricate themselves from a possible exorcism of a bizarre oversized mirror, race to the hospital and revive a dead Judy through the power of prayer. The scene offers the difficult possibility that their daughter is potentially cursed, or that, even worse, Lorraine potentially has offered up Judy’s soul to the devil in exchange for long life.
For much of the film, that enticing idea undergirds the main plot line like a ticking time bomb. Director Michael Chaves, in a much more successful and affecting fashion than his previous outputs for the franchise, builds a tightly knotted tension through effective foreshadowing and with several complex Rube Goldberg machines. Last Rites is based on the supposed haunting of the Smurl family home in West Pittston, PA, from 1974-89, a haunting that resulted in a media storm and a book that was co-authored by the Warrens. As the couple investigates the possible possession, they also prepare to welcome Judy’s fiancée Tony (Ben Hardy) into the family.
As with any other Conjuring film, the details of the “why” are less important than the mechanics of the haunting itself, and Chaves and company dispense with the investigatory detective work that hampered The Devil Made Me Do It in favor of a series of genuinely spooky set pieces. They also importantly tie together the Warren’s own experiences with that of the Smurl family, which gives this chapter a more personal and, sure, “devastating” feel than what has come before it.
In a series that is admirably earnest, Last Rites easily takes the cake as the most wholesome chapter of the bunch, its insistence on God and faith teetering on religious propaganda. But the approach is undoubtedly effective, with a climax that is as scary as it is emotionally resonant. In a way that has not always been true of The Conjuring, many of the film’s scariest moments are tied seamlessly to the emotional stakes of the characters. A scene in which Judy is being pursued by a ghostly presence while she tries on wedding dresses in front of an infinity mirror is amongst the franchise’s most breathtaking scares, and let’s just say that there’s another exquisitely jarring scene with a recurring character later in the film that is a masterful manipulation.
All of these moments culminate in a question that has rested in the center of all 10 films of the extended universe: Is it better to shut out the ghosts of the past through sheer force of will or to stare them in the face in fearless confrontation? For Ed, Lorraine and perhaps especially Judy, it is a question that is poised to haunt them either into the next stage of life, or beyond the mirror’s false reflection, into the death trap of the undiscovered country.
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