“After The Exorcist was so wildly popular, first as a novel and then as a movie, Ed and Lorraine stopped encountering ghosts and began to uncover demon infestations,” said Garten, who co-wrote In A Dark Place with the Warrens. “And it seems that wherever they went, people were being sexually molested by demons.” This doesn’t seem like a coincidence. In 2014, Ed’s longtime assistant Judith Penney, who lived with the Warrens for decades, claimed that he groomed her from the time she was 15. She told The Hollywood Reporter that Ed was sexually abusive toward her and physically abusive toward Lorraine. Ed died in 2006, but when Lorraine made the deal with New Line for The Conjuring, she stipulated—rather specifically—that the films couldn’t show the couple engaging in sex crimes, including child pornography, sexual assault, or sex with minors. The ensuing pious portrayal was mandated from the beginning, as important to the franchise’s success as the idea that the hauntings were real.
When the Smurl house was investigated by Paul Kurtz, who was chairman of the Committee For The Scientific Investigation Of Claims Of The Paranormal, in 1986, he said that the haunting was “a hoax, a charade, a ghost story,” and suggested that the Smurl family submit themselves to psychiatric and psychological examinations. Kurtz also insisted that the Smurl family was falling for their 17-year-old daughter’s pranks. “I have been in this work for over 40 years,” he told the Observer–Reporter in 1986, “and I am not about to let a 17-year-old girl hoodwink me.” Last Rites doesn’t touch on any of this and leaves out the questionable mental state of family patriarch Jack Smurl, who had water surgically removed from his brain a decade after he started claiming his house was haunted. But what’s even stranger is how tangential the Warrens were to the Smurl case, aside from making it a national concern.
The Warrens showed up in Pittston in January 1986, but had little to do with the demonic expulsion. In fact, near the end of that year, after three “unsuccessful” exorcisms, Rev. Joseph Adonizio claimed that “intense prayers” at Immaculate Conception Parish had “chased the foul smells and violent demons from their home.” But the Warrens were always much better publicists than exorcists. Two months later, the couple had co-written a paperback, The Haunted, with Jack and Janet Smurl, which would later be turned into a made-for-TV movie.
But the Smurl case is almost secondary to Last Rites‘ Warren reclamation project, which hinges on Ed accepting his daughter’s boyfriend into the family. In the wedding-set epilogue, Judy (Mia Tomlinson) marries Tony (Ben Hardy), who’s spent the film vying for Ed’s approval. Giving the series a whiff of finality, the ceremony’s guests include The Conjuring‘s Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and Cindy Perron (Mackenzie Foy), The Conjuring 2‘s Peggy (Frances O’Connor) and Janet Hodgson (Madison Wolfe), and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It‘s David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard). Never mind that Ed and Lorraine never actually investigated Conjuring 2‘s Enfield poltergeist, and that the real Glatzel sued Lorraine Warren for claiming he was possessed. The most realistic attendee at this fictional back-patting affair is director James Wan, who appears in a cameo, presumably to thank the Warrens for the billion-dollar franchise.
The reputation laundering becomes overwhelming in Ed and Lorraine’s final dance. Lorraine tells Ed that she had a vision where they met their grandchild, wrote a book (which she says will be terrible, but was their story), and continued to help people. Some of this is reflected in their real-life counterparts: The Warrens certainly helped the Lutz family maintain the Amityville story long after it was found to be a fabrication, and they certainly helped themselves, spinning up at least six books based on their hokum. But, in keeping with the cinematic universe’s “based on a true story” marketing, The Conjuring: Last Rites’ final title cards end the series with its most important goal: Selling the idea that Ed and Lorraine Warren, while “controversial,” were instrumental in legitimizing paranormal studies. Searching for a way to give the hucksters their Hollywood ending, the golden-lit ending hails the Warrens as benevolent heroes, rather than con artists perpetuating their clients’ delusions and profiting from their stories.
