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The Conjuring: Last Rites is expected to be the final film starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren. It also, based on a new featurette for the film, looks to be the darkest case in the long-running movie series.
The fourth film in the series will mark the 12th anniversary of the two stars’ original portrayal of the infamous paranormal investigators. It will also be the 15th year in the time-span that the films have covered. The first Conjuring movie was set in 1971, while this fourth film will be set in 1986.
One new addition to The Conjuring: Last Rites is the Warren’s now-adult daughter, Judy, played by Mia Tomlinson. Her addition comes due to Ed Warren’s heart condition (which is seen in the third film) that has led to he and Lorraine entering semi-retirement.
Unfortunately for them, the Smurl haunting case came along, dragging them back into the fray.
“The third film was kind of a detour,” Patrick Wilson told Entertainment Weekly. “It was more a murder mystery, really like a true crime. This really felt like a proper ending to get back to the heart of the franchise, the family of it all.”
Wilson also stated, “Ed got pretty beat up in the third one, so I honestly didn’t want to be on death’s door for this movie. First of all, there’s no reason to be — he lived another 25 years. But retirement was interesting to me It was important to show the skeptics. We’re not in the middle of Amityville, when [hauntings were] everywhere. What is it like when they’re not playing to big crowds? What does that do to them?”
In The Conjuring: Last Rites, Ed and Lorraine Warren are drawn to investigate a haunted house owned Jack and Janet Smurl in West Pittston, Pennsylvania. The Smurls claimed a demon inhabited their home between 1974 and 1989. During that time, they claimed the demon caused loud noises, bad odors, threw their dog, pushed one of their daughters down a flight of stairs, and even physically and sexually assaulted family members. During their investigation, Ed Warren said the demon made numerous knocking and rapping sounds and even left him a message on a mirror which told him to “get out.”
According to FrightFind.com…
Sitting down with the Smurls, the Warrens concluded that there were four presences in the home. There were two women, with the younger being past the age of a teenager, who she felt had a malevolent tendency. Another was the spirit of a man who Lorraine felt had died in the home decades earlier or on the physical property itself. Finally, there was a powerful demon who reigned over the home and supernaturally forced the home’s three spirits to torment the Smurls.
Against such powerful odds, the Warrens put the family in touch with an Episcopal priest who came and performed an exorcism on the home. As the activity dwindled to a degree, word spread throughout the neighborhood and into the local media. Soon news vans and reporters were staked out on the neighborhood block, looking to break any new information. As a result, the Catholic Church sent a priest to live in the home briefly with the Smurls so as to not appear cold to the situation. After half a week, the priest left due to no activity surfacing. However, the Smurls underwent a second and third exorcism shortly thereafter.
After the investigation, the Smurls and Warrens wrote a book about their experience titled The Haunted. The Smurls and Warrens also co-wrote a two-hour made-for-TV movie by the same name as the book that aired in 1991. After moving from the haunted home, the Smurls claimed to have been haunted again and were able to procure a fourth exorcism, this time from the Catholic Church itself. The family has pretty much been out of the public eye ever since.