'The Conjuring: Last Rites' stars scare up thrills one last time

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Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga first appeared as renowned paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring more than a decade ago.

Across four films, the actors have perfected one of Hollywood’s best onscreen marriages as they recounted the exploits of the Warrens’ well-documented battle against demonic entities during their 60-year union.

Wilson took the role of paranormal investigator Ed Warren in the first film 12 years ago, with close friend Vera Farmiga playing his character’s wife, Lorraine.

In real life, Ed was a self-taught demonologist, while Lorraine was a clairvoyant. Among the notable cases they investigated were a witch that threatened the Perron family, the Amityville haunting, the Enfield Poltergeist and the trial of 19-year-old Arne Cheyenne Johnson, who attempted to blame demonic possession after he murdered his landlord.

To be sure, there have been plenty of scares outside of following those cases onscreen. When Postmedia spoke to the pair during their promotional rounds for The Conjuring II, Wilson recounted an incident on the set in which curtains started inexplicably moving around. Meanwhile, Farmiga told us about finding her hallway empty after answering a knock on her hotel room door in the middle of the night.

“Mark, I don’t like talking about this at all. Yes, lots of scary stuff has happened to me,” Farmiga, 52, now says of her experience making the movies.

“Patrick’s the brains and the brawn. They don’t touch him … Somehow Patrick’s impervious to it, but I’m susceptible … and that’s all I’m going to (say) because I don’t want any more in my life. That’s all I’m going to say.”

After strange occurrences happened while working on the first film, franchise architect James Wan had a priest bless the set of The Conjuring II.

When shooting began on Annabelle, a spinoff centred on the demonic doll that haunts the Warrens, a priest visited that set as well.

But with the final entry, The Conjuring: Last Rites, in theatres this Friday, Farmiga says she’s facing a brand-new sense of fear — life away from Wilson and making films set in the Conjuring Universe.

“The scariest part of this experience for me … is knowing that I’ll never do it again,” Farmiga says. “I’ll never tease my hair up into that updo. I won’t hear Patrick spew Latin anymore. It’s done … No more.”

For Wilson, his biggest real-life fright came from wanting to make sure the finale lived up to the success of its predecessors.

“If I’m being honest, the scenes that give you the most worry, are the most rewarding. Thinking about the climax to this film, and all we go through, we got a bunch of actors, we’ve got effects, we’ve got Latin, we’ve got fire, screaming, tears, the emotional ending of a franchise, we’ve got everything coming at us. In terms of scariness, you’re thinking in that moment, ‘Gosh, I hope all these elements come together,'” he says.

“That’s where movies like this sometimes fail. And The Conjuring has been so important to us because we’ve felt it raises everyone’s game. But that also means you look around and realize that every department better have their A-game … That’s the scariest part.”

Directed by Michael Chaves (who also helmed The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and the Conjuring-verse spinoffs The Curse of La Llorona and The Nun II), Last Rites details the Warrens’ attempts to help Pennsylvania’s Smurl family rid their home of a demonic entity in the 1970s. It was one of the couple’s last high-profile cases and involved their daughter Judy (Mia Tomlinson). The Smurl haunting gained notoriety after the family appeared on TV shows like Larry King Live and Entertainment Tonight.

Their story was the subject of a bestselling book The Haunted: One Family’s Nightmare (1986) and a Golden Globe-nominated 1991 made-for-TV movie that featured Sally Kirkland.

“If you look at their cases, they had hundreds of cases and they’re all well-documented, the Smurl family was a massive one,” Wilson says. “I won’t say they were press hungry, but they were on TV quite a lot and there’s a lot out there. So it felt like the right case to go out on. It was their last big one.”

The nine-film franchise, which also includes a pair of Annabelle films, will continue. There is already talk of a TV spinoff set in the same universe as the movies.

But for Farmiga and Wilson, their time playing Ed and Lorraine has ended. “It’s finito,” Farmiga says assuredly. “Curtain call. That,” she says looking slightly forlorn, “is not fun.”

The Conjuring: Last Rites opens in theatres Friday, Sept. 5.

mdaniell@postmedia.com