We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
THE CONJURING: LAST RITES (2025)
Back in 2013, James Wan cast Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as a real-life couple paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren in his horror film The Conjuring – and while there’s a lot of debate over the legitimacy of the Warrens’ claims that they went up against all sorts of ghosts and demons in their lives, there’s no doubt that Wilson and Farmiga turned in great performances bringing their characters to life on the screen, making the cinematic Ed and Lorraine Warren one of my all-time favorite couples to watch. Wilson and Farmiga reprised the roles in The Conjuring 2, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, and the spin-off film Annabelle Comes Home – and while the actors said they would keep playing Ed and Lorraine for as long as they would be asked back to do it, somebody behind the scenes decided that their run should wrap up with the fourth proper Conjuring movie, The Conjuring: Last Rites. Thus the title. This is meant to be the last time we see Wilson and Farmiga play these characters.
The first movie showed Ed and Lorraine investigating a case in 1971. There was a substantial time jump between each sequel, leading to Last Rites being set in 1986. At this point, Ed is dealing with serious heart issues (after having suffered a heart attack in The Devil Made Me Do It), so the couple has largely retired from field work. Their daughter Judy is 22-years-old and dating Tony Spera (Ben Hardy), a former police officer who intends to marry her... and here’s a bit of a bummer: although Sterling Jerins played Judy in each of the previous films, the role was recast in this one. This wasn’t the first time that someone else played Judy in a prominent role, as Mckenna Grace was cast as the character for Annabelle Comes Home, but in that case it made a bit more sense because we had already seen Jerins play Judy in the 1977-set The Conjuring 2, and Annabelle Comes Home – released three years after The Conjuring 2 – was set five years earlier, so they needed a younger Judy. Here, Jerins would have been a couple years younger than 22 when filming took place, but it’s a shame that she wasn’t entrusted with playing the adult version of the character she had already been playing for over a decade. She was replaced by Mia Tomlinson, who’s nine years older than her. I have nothing against Tomlinson, she does a fine job as Judy, but I feel sorry for Jerins.
Lorraine is very spirit-sensitive and has psychic abilities, and those abilities have been passed down to Judy. Lorraine has tried to teach Judy how to block out her scary visions – but when a haunted mirror brings horror into the home of the Smurl family in Pennsylvania, Judy has trouble ignoring the problem. That’s because Ed and Lorraine had crossed paths with this haunted mirror before, back in 1964, and the situation was so intense that it sent Lorraine into early labor. Judy was born that night – and, briefly, she was stillborn. So this case has a personal connection to Judy, tying back to the night she came into the world.
After a family friend is killed by the spirits tormenting the Smurls, Judy heads off from the Warren home in Connecticut and goes to Pennsylvania to look into this matter herself. Her parents and Tony follow, setting the stage for a spooky climactic sequence that went a bit over-the-top for my taste.
After trying something different with The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, which involved a murder investigation and a human villain, the franchise returned to its roots for Last Rites, which is, like the first two movies, a more straightforward haunted house movie. Directed by Michael Chaves from a screenplay by Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (who crafted the story with Wan), this was a fine way for the franchise to come full circle and wrap up (or wrap up the Wilson/Farmiga era; there’s already a prequel in the works that will see different actors playing the Warrens), even if it doesn’t come anywhere near the level of the first Conjuring.
NIGHTKILL (1980)
Directed by Ted Post from a script by Joan Andre (who was working from a story by John Case), Nightkill is a cool neo-noir thriller that, at times, had me thinking about Blood Simple, the excellent neo-noir thriller that the Coen Brothers made four years after Nightkill was released. Of course, Blood Simple has that style and tone that’s unique to the Coens, but it and Nightkill share a lot of similar elements.
This one stars Jaclyn Smith of Charlie’s Angels as Kathy Atwell, an Arizona housewife in a loveless marriage to industrialist Wendell Atwell (Mike Connors), a man who is truly, deeply unpleasant in every way. Kathy wants a divorce, but Wendell is forcing her to stay in their marriage for public appearances, even though they’re both cheating on each other. Wendell has a mistress that he meets up with while on business trips, while Kathy is sleeping with his assistant, Steve Fulton (James Franciscus).
The movie makes it clear from the start that Kathy and Steve have been under audio surveillance while meeting up at the Atwells’ hilltop mansion, so we immediately know that somebody is going to know that Steve has killed Wendell. He drops poison into Wendell’s drink without ever getting Kathy’s opinion on the idea. (She would have been against it.) Steve does share information that Kathy wasn’t aware of: Wendell keeps 1 million dollars in an airport locker, funds that he set aside for payoffs and bribes, and now that he’s dead, that cash can be theirs.
Of course, it’s not that simple. Wendell’s body goes missing. Steve turns up dead. Kathy has to dispose of his body, and Wendell seems to be alive and stalking her. Still, his secretary has reported him missing, and a police officer played by Robert Mitchum comes snooping around. Kathy also has to deal with the fact that her friend Herbert Childs (Fritz Weaver) wants to hook up with her, despite being married to a woman played by Sybil Danning... and who is it that has been recording everything that goes on in her house?
Nightkill takes some interesting twists and turns and features some good suspense sequences as this terrible situation Kathy has been forced into unravels around her.
The movie was supposed to receive a theatrical release, but distributor Avco Embassy ended up selling it off to NBC, so it first made its way out into the world as an NBC Movie of the Week in December of 1980. Maybe that’s why is seems to have largely lapsed into obscurity; instead of being remembered as a cool thriller that played on the big screen, it has been brushed off as a TV movie. It deserves more respect for that, though, because Case and Andre crafted an interesting story that goes in some unexpected directions and Post did a good job bringing that story to the screen with a solid cast.
I would encourage fans of thrillers to seek this one out.
ONSLAUGHT (2026)
Director Adam Wingard got his start making low budget horror movies like Home Sick, Pop Skull, and A Horrible Way to Die, building up to the breakthrough duo of You’re Next and The Guest. That opened the door to him getting the chance to direct the big budget spectacles Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. There’s going to be a third Godzilla/Kong movie – but Wingard opted not to direct that one, choosing instead to return to his roots with the gonzo action horror movie Onslaught. I was excited to see what he would do with his returning to this world... but, unfortunately, the movie never quite clicked for me.
This one sounded awesome in the build-up to its release, starting with the fact that it has a great cast. Adria Arjona stars as Celeste, a former Army sniper who now lives in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere, out in the desert. Dan Stevens and Rebecca Hall are the Kammlers, German scientists who have developed a trio of super soldiers for the United States government. Through surgical modification and psychological conditioning, three soldiers – called Crybaby, Cockroach, and the Butcher – have been turned into unstoppable killing machines. Eric Wareheim and Reginald VelJohnson play trailer park residents, with Blake Kennedy as Celeste’s young daughter Daisy. Drew Starkey appears as Cyrus, a cleaner for the U.S. government who I guess is supposed to be a bit of comic relief since he just took a dose of MDMA before he was called to work, but he seemed like a completely unnecessary character to me.
The super-soldiers (played by Tyler Hall, Dave Campbell, and Alex Pereira) escape from the secret military base they’ve been hidden away in, killing a character played by a sadly wasted Michael Biehn in the process, and head out across the desert on a killing spree that will lead them to Celeste’s trailer park. There’s an on-screen countdown to the disaster to come, which takes up roughly half of the film’s 92-minute running time. And yet, somehow, the movie never manages to live up to the potential of the concept.
All of the good ingredients are in the mix. Wingard directed the film well, and Matt Pusti provided a score that’s very reminiscent of John Carpenter. The ingredients just don’t come together in a way that’s nearly as cool as I thought it would be, or as it should have been. The movie comes off feeling surprisingly lackluster. It's okay, but I hoped it would be so much better and more exciting.
The following review originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
MARROW (2026)
Director Mitch McLeod’s horror film Marrow begins with text on-screen informing us that “From May 7, 2000 to February 3, 2002, a Texas resident, pen name Distal Marrow, was repeatedly contacted via email by an individual or individuals under the moniker NOOSPLEHDEENI (I NEED HELP SOON). What follows is inspired by these events.” The movie also ends with a dedication: “In Loving Memory of James ‘Distal Marrow’ Foster.” A quick online search doesn’t turn up any further information about the NOOSPLEHDEENI situation, but James Foster was indeed a real person who wrote under the pen name Distal Marrow, and McLeod has even described him as his mentor.
Marrow, which McLeod wrote alongside his wife Jessica Dawn Willis and author Preston Fassel, pays tribute to the late James Foster by naming the Texas-based lead character, played by Willis, Jamie Foster. Jamie, who uses the name Distal Marrow online, is host of the once-popular true crime podcast Embracing the Paradox (it was the #6 podcast online two years ago) that has recently been losing listeners because the focus has shifted from serial killers to cryptids. Jamie’s aunt / benefactor Camilla (genre icon Danielle Harris) has just ranted at her about her declining popularity when she’s contacted by a mysterious longtime listener called NOOSPLEHDEENI, who points out an interesting situation to her: four Texas-based influencers have recently gone missing after first being tormented by... something. They told their followers that they had been seeing and hearing things that would make people think they’re crazy, and then they vanished.
Jamie does a show on the case, tossing out the possible title The Texas Influencer Massacre... but NOOSPLEHDEENI stays in contact, and their interactions get increasingly creepy. This mysterious caller has too much information about the case. They have video of a missing woman being held captive. They imply that Jamie is being watched... which, given that she lives in an isolated cabin surrounded by dark forest, is quite possible.
Jamie gets calls from NOOSPLEHDEENI and receives visits from the likes of Camilla, a pair of authority figures, and doctor-turned-doomsayer Jonathan Myers (the great Michael Ironside), but Marrow is a one-woman show for portions of its 94-minute running time, and Willis does a great job carrying the film on her shoulders. Jamie is an interesting character, who seems vulnerable but also doesn’t hesitate to pull out a gun when she feels threatened. Her interest in true crime even inspired her to apply to the FBI at one point in her life, but now she’s trying to distance herself from having to research killers all the time. That’s why she was turning to cryptid stories – but stories of human cruelty prove too intriguing for her to fully turn her back on them.
Marrow has a really interesting thriller set-up that had me engaged from the start. The idea of a true crime podcast host being drawn too deeply into a case by a longtime listener who’s involved with the case is a great idea. Add in a strong lead performance and the appearances by Harris and Ironside, and this movie has a lot going for it. But, as the story goes on, it moves beyond grounded thrills and ventures further into the supernatural – much like Jamie’s podcast has been doing. And, like Jamie’s listeners, I lost a degree of interest when I realized that this was going in a fully supernatural direction, even if that element brought to mind the awesome Session 9 in some ways. The supernatural swerve doesn't come out of nowhere, it makes sense to what was going on, but I found the execution to be underwhelming.
So, Marrow turned out in a way that was quite different from how I hoped it would, but getting to that conclusion was an interesting journey. The movie is worth a look from thriller fans, and maybe the supernatural twist will work better for others than it did for me.
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