Reader, beware, spoilers For “The Conjuring: Last Rites”, follow.
When James Wan made the first “The Conjuring” in 2013, the title seemed to be quite explicit. For the starters, it was a much more evocative and scary title than “The Warren Files”, which was apparently the initial idea of Wan, according to an interview of 2017. Although this rejected title certainly does not have the same pizazz as “The Conjuring”, it works in the way Wan hoped, which was to provide “a sort of name of more surrounded umbrella” for the cinematic universe which was to follow. Admittedly, this placed the real scientist / psychic team of The Warrens – Ed and Lorraine, played in the films of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga – Front and Center, which is a very understandable impulse given the vitality of the characters with franchise.
In the past 12 years, there have been nine (or, according to whom you ask, 10) films in the combined universe, and this title did not work directly to the Warrens but to strange events in the films. No one really questioned the relevance of the title, especially because the first “conspiracy” told the story of Carolyn Perron (Lili Taylor) and his family, which inadvertently evokes the malicious spirit of a 19th century witch. The title seemed to refer to this phenomenon, especially since the follow-up that followed and the spin-off “Annabelle” and “The Nun” the films involved bad spirits to evoke in one way or another. However, the last episode (and, at least for the Warrens, last), “The Conjuring: Last Rites”, contains a post-key post-key and a photo of the real Ed Warren which entails the title of the franchise.
In this document, we are shown that the haunted mirror in the “last rites” existed not only in the cases of real Warrens, but that it was once used in a ritual intended to evoke a spirit. The mirror is called “a conjuration mirror”, which implies that the franchise has been appointed for the mirror. Given the importance of the mirror for the Warrens in “Last Rites”, this story of origin that we have not seen coming is strangely appropriate and seems to rethink the Warrens in the name of their own franchise.
The mirror of real conjured life does not matter much about the Warrens
Because post-script post-writer have a leading placement in the film and a disturbing background frame, it seems that Wan and the other people involved in the manufacture of the combined universe wanted the title of the series to refer to the mirror from the start. However, this can be demystified for several reasons. First, the primordial importance of the mirror for the history of the Warrens is a total compensated fiction for the “last rites”. As the film would have done, an Ed and Lorraine barely within 20 years (played by Orion Smith and Madison Lawler) met the mirror in one of their very first surveys, in which the mirror presents itself in an antiquity store where it threatens a merchant and his daughter. However, the couple intentionally loses the trace due to their daughter, Judy, threatened by the minds that reside there.
In reality, the real mirror (which now lies at the Occult museum of Ed and Lorraine Warren in Monroe, Connecticut) came to the Warrens when they were presented by the church to Steven Zellner, originally from New Jersey who would have made an incantation on the object to see (negatively manipulating the spirits). This would align with the post-writing of the film on the mirror used to evoke a spirit in the past. Finally, Zellner obtained the warrens to help him exorcise the spirits and put the mirror for the guard. While the mirror has never threatened the Warrens or their daughter over a long period, it apparently led to an incident in which the Warrens were threatened by a mysterious black car while transporting the mirror to a place of guard.
The most obvious reason that the title of the series has never been initially intended to refer to the mirror is that no one could have predicted that the first “conspiracy” would have succeeded enough to generate three direct suites, not to mention several fallout. As such, there is no direct allusion to the conjuration mirror in the three films “Conjuring”. Thus, the most practical and simplest explanation of the new meaning of the title is that it is a Retcon, and that it works as the revelation of the meaning of the title “The Lord of the Rings” in the novel by Jrr Tolkien “The Return of the King”. It is a device that gives the title already established an extra dramatic weight in order to help the last chapter to feel like an appropriate conclusion.
Could the conspiracy mirror be implemented in the first “Conjuration?”
In “Last Rites”, The Hauned Mirror is the central antagonist of the film. This is the object that represents unfinished affairs for Ed and Lorraine, it is the cause of the obsession of the Smurl family and, in the end, it is the conduit by which Judy Warren (Mia Tomlinson) is possessed by the demon who wants to tear the Warrens. Although the history of the combined mirror as in “Last Rites” was certainly not planned in 2013, it is quite possible that its existence was lit in several of the “conjugated” films. After all, the idea behind the universe combined from the start was that it would adapt the real cases of the warrens into fictitious stories. “Annabelle comes home” is a good example of this philosophy, because it includes a group of spirits studied by real warrens mixed in a completely fictional story. Then there is the question of the Warrens trophy room, which has always been dressed to include allusions and references to other cases of Warren.
In this spirit, it is possible to see moments dotted with “conjugated” films which seem to predict the conjuration mirror retrospectively. In the first “conjure”, Carolyn originally sees Bathsheba’s spirit in the mirror of his daughter’s music box, an object that is part of the last plan of the film in which the camera zooms in on the mirror. Is the shooting part of a false fear, starting the viewers to expect a ghost that does not appear, or does it also try to underline 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 a scene. Of course, mirrors are a common trope in horror films, probably for mythological and spiritual reasons latent behind the belief in a real mirror of conspiracy. Thus, the very existence of mirrors and frightening things that happen in and around them in the “combined” films is not exactly a smoking pistol that the series always predicted to reveal a deeper connotation in its title.
The truly intelligent aspect of these post-key credits is how it has a lot of power thanks to involvement, which in turn is essentially paranormal belief. As most of us know, there are very little tangible and unequivocal evidence of the existence of minds. Thus, most people who believe in them do not do so by objective but subjective evidence, and this proof is often delivered by involvement and suggestion. In other words, of course, the post-scriptum suggests that the combined films have been named after the haunted mirror are logically unique. However, isn’t that more fun, more intriguing, more strange, to believe that it is true? It’s up to you to decide.
