Lee Daniels brought in daily prayers, a real-life "deliverer" for The Deliverance

Lee Daniels reportedly had a spiritualist on hand for the production of his new Christian horror movie The Deliverance, at least in part, to quote the man himself, to give a firm “Nope, not today, Satan. Ain’t happening today up in this motherfucker.”

Daniels revealed this “not up in this motherfucker” precaution to Variety this week, saying he’d actually been warned off doing the film years earlier by his mother, because, “she really believed I’m an open portal for all sorts of energies, and she really felt that if I was going to do that, something bad was going to happen to me.” (It’s possible she should have been more worried about him being haunted by critics, who’ve drubbed the movie, with the nicest thing The A.V. Club‘s Jacob Oller was able to muster about the new Netflix release being that its final act is “nearly wacky enough to justify slogging through the rest of the film.”)

Talking about the decision to bring in a real-life “deliverer”—they are, as we understand it, kind of like exorcists, except instead of kicking demons out of you, they kick Jesus in—Daniels noted that partly they were brought in just to give a reference for actor Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, who plays one in the film. But he also cited famous disasters that befell the production of movies like The Exorcist and Poltergeist, and thus instituted a policy of daily prayer on the set. (Netflix HR tried to raise a flag, Daniels notes, but “We figured out a system where I could say, ‘I don’t mean to be offensive, but for those of us that aren’t into prayer, feel free to leave the set.’ And there were a few people that did, but most people, most of the 200 or so crew knew that they wanted to be protected.”) Tragically, this shield of faith could not ward off a 36 percent rotten Rotten Tomatoes rating; we’ll have to wait and see if Jesus can give better coverage on the service’s populist new Popcornmeter.