Reader beware, spoilers for “The Conjuring: Last Rites” follow.
When James Wan made the first “The Conjuring” in 2013, the title seemed to be pretty self-explanatory. For starters, it was a much more evocative and creepy title than “The Warren Files,” which was apparently Wan’s initial idea, according to an interview from 2017. While that rejected title certainly doesn’t have the same pizazz as “The Conjuring,” it functions in the way that Wan was hoping, which was to provide “a more encompassing sort of umbrella name” for the cinematic universe that was to follow. Certainly, it puts the real-life demonologist/psychic team of the Warrens — Ed and Lorraine, played in the movies by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga — front and center, which is a very understandable impulse given how vital the characters are to the franchise.
Over the last 12 years, there have been nine (or, depending on who you ask, 10) films in the Conjuring universe, and that title has functioned not as a reference to the Warrens directly but to the eerie happenings in the movies. No one has really questioned the title’s relevance, especially because the first “Conjuring” told the tale of Carolyn Perron (Lili Taylor) and her family, who inadvertently conjure up the malevolent spirit of a 19th-century witch. The title appeared to refer to that phenomenon, especially as the sequels that followed and the spin-off “Annabelle” and “The Nun” films involved evil spirits being conjured somehow. However, the latest (and, at least for the Warrens, last) installment, “The Conjuring: Last Rites,” contains a post-credits postscript and a photo of the real Ed Warren that retcons the title of the franchise.
In it, we’re shown that the haunted mirror in “Last Rites” not only existed in the real Warrens’ case files, but that it was once used in a ritual intended to conjure up a spirit. The mirror is referred to as “a conjuring mirror,” implying that the franchise has been named for the mirror all along. Given the mirror’s importance to the Warrens in “Last Rites,” this origin story we didn’t see coming feels eerily appropriate and seems to re-center the Warrens in the name of their own franchise.
The real life conjuring mirror doesn’t hold that much importance to the Warrens
Because the post-credits postscript is afforded a prominent placement in the film and an ominous backstory, it seems like Wan and the other people involved in the making of the Conjuring universe intended the title of the series to refer to the mirror all along. Yet this can be debunked for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the mirror’s paramount importance to the Warrens’ story is a total fiction made up for “Last Rites.” As the film would have it, a barely-in-their-20s Ed and Lorraine (played by Orion Smith and Madison Lawler) encountered the mirror in one of their very first investigations, in which the mirror turns up at an antique store where it menaces a shopkeeper and his daughter. However, the couple intentionally loses track of it due to their daughter, Judy, being threatened by the spirits residing within it.
In reality, the actual mirror (which now resides at the Occult Museum of Ed and Lorraine Warren in Monroe, Connecticut) came to the Warrens when they were introduced by the church to Steven Zellner, a native of New Jersey who allegedly performed an incantation on the object to see (and negatively manipulate) the future of his enemies, an act which led to Zellner being tormented by the spirits he’d unleashed. This would line up with the movie’s postscript about the mirror being used to conjure up a spirit in the past. Eventually, Zellner got the Warrens to help him exorcise the spirits and stow away the mirror for safekeeping. While the mirror never threatened the Warrens or their daughter over a long period of time, it apparently did lead to an incident in which the Warrens were menaced by a mysterious black car while transporting the mirror to a place of safekeeping.
The most obvious reason that the title of the series was never initially intended to refer to the mirror is that no one could’ve predicted that the first “The Conjuring” would be successful enough to beget three direct sequels, let alone several spinoffs. As such, there’s no direct allusion to the conjuring mirror in the main three “Conjuring” films. Thus, the most practical, simplest explanation for the title’s new significance is that it’s a retcon, and that it operates like the reveal of the significance of the title “The Lord of the Rings” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel “The Return of the King.” It’s a device that gives the already established title some extra dramatic weight in order to help the final chapter feel like a proper conclusion.
Could the conjuring mirror have been set up in the first ‘Conjuring?’
In “Last Rites,” the haunted mirror is the film’s central antagonist. It’s the object that represents unfinished business for Ed and Lorraine, it’s the cause of the haunting of the Smurl family, and, ultimately, it’s the conduit through which Judy Warren (Mia Tomlinson) is possessed by the demon that wants to tear the Warrens apart. While the conjuring mirror’s story as seen in “Last Rites” was surely not planned all the way back in 2013, it’s entirely possible that its existence was hinted at in several of the prior “Conjuring” films. After all, the idea behind the Conjuring universe from the start was that it would adapt the real-life cases of the Warrens into fictionalized stories. “Annabelle Comes Home” is a good example of this ethos, as it includes a group of spirits investigated by the real-life Warrens blended into a totally fictional story. Then there’s the matter of the Warrens’ trophy room, which has always been dressed to include allusions and references to other Warren cases.
With this in mind, it’s possible to see moments peppered throughout the “Conjuring” films that seem to presage the conjuring mirror in retrospect. In the first “Conjuring,” Carolyn initially sees the spirit of Bathsheba in her daughter’s music box mirror, an object which is part of the last shot of the film in which the camera zooms into the mirror. Is the shot part of a fake-out scare, priming the viewers to expect a ghost who doesn’t appear, or is it also trying to point out the mirror itself? In “The Conjuring 2,” Lorraine is tormented by the spirit of Valak (Bonnie Aarons), the Demon Nun, who appears to her in a mirror in one scene. Of course, mirrors are a common trope in horror films, likely for the latent mythological and spiritual reasons behind the belief in an actual conjuring mirror. So, the very existence of mirrors and spooky things happening in and around them in the “Conjuring” films isn’t exactly a smoking gun that the series was always planning on revealing a deeper connotation to its title.
The really clever aspect to this post-credits “reveal” is how it carries a lot of power through implication, which in turn is essentially what belief in the paranormal is all about. As most of us know, there exists very little tangible, unequivocal evidence of the existence of spirits. Thus, most folks who believe in them do so not out of objective but subjective proof, and this proof is often delivered through implication and suggestion. In other words, sure, the postscript suggesting that the Conjuring films were named after the haunted mirror is logically unsound. Yet isn’t it more fun, more intriguing, more eerie, to believe that it’s true? It’s up to you to decide.
