Heavenly father, please protect us from the ridiculous exorcism horror The Deliverance

There is a warped logic to Lee Daniels, filmmaker of nose-boppingly obvious melodramas and sordid stupidity, moving into horror. In an exorcism film, reason is often the only thing standing in the way of the haunted family getting some relief. But Daniels’ big, broad tone doesn’t lend itself to his ultra-serious tale of addiction, suffering children, cycles of abuse, and the compelling power of Christ. With every over-the-top line of dialogue and tone-deaf gamble, The Deliverance inches closer to becoming a parody of itself.

This is partially because Daniels seems completely out of his depth working within the genre, and partially because the family drama surrounding the horror is laughably confounding. Perhaps that’s to be expected from Daniels and his two male screenwriters—David Coggeshall (of The Family Plan) and Elijah Bynum (of Magazine Dreams, the Jonathan Majors bodybuilding movie that might never see the light of day)—attempting to tell a ghost story about single Black motherhood.

Ebony (Andra Day) has just moved into a new place with her kids—teenagers Shante (Demi Singleton) and Nate (Caleb McLaughlin), and elementary schooler Andre (Anthony B. Jenkins)—and her white mom Alberta (Glenn Close, following Hillbilly Elegy with another outrageous slice of Netflix camp). Day reunites with Daniels after earning an Oscar nomination for her debut performance in The United States Vs. Billie Holiday, though she’s given an infinitely less inspiring role here. Ebony is a one-note wreck, abusive, boozing, and caustic. She slaps her children around, batters them with curses, and steals their savings for a quick drink.

The Deliverance is an abrasive movie, even when that abrasiveness is so exaggerated as to be a punchline. Glenn Close’s willingness to be a caricature is weaponized, shouting things like “Do it, bitch,” while dressed in an array of bad wigs, low-cut tops, and daisy dukes. The worst Child Protective Services worker imaginable (Mo’Nique) swings by from time to time, keeping loose, hands-off tabs on Ebony’s increasingly brutalized children. Even an exterminator, called in about the house’s smell of decay, doesn’t make it out scot-free, weathering racist remarks after swearing at his clients. This aggressive tone never coalesces into an oppressive atmosphere, nor does it connect its characters’ pain with the supernatural using any kind of metaphor. This is no Babadook. It’s not even deep enough to pass as one of the many copycat horror movies “actually about trauma” that surfaced in the decade since.

Instead, The Deliverance views its Bad Mom with a scold’s paternalism, punishing Ebony’s lack of faith (which lapsed after God failed to intervene as she was being sexually assaulted as a child) with an onslaught of hellish happenings—the spiritual version of conservatives wagging their fingers at rape survivors. The film takes a similarly contemptuous perspective towards the impoverished family’s absent father figure and Ebony’s alcoholism. Alberta used to be the same kind of abusive drunk, but she goes to church, so she’s all good now. It’s all so loud and insulting that it’s hard not to laugh; it’s more of a Scary Movie than a scary movie.

And yet, inspired by the Ammons haunting which plagued a family in Gary, Indiana back in 2011, The Deliverance dutifully trudges on down to Spirit Halloween, filling its cart from the bargain bin: black flies buzzing out of nowhere, a basement door opening by itself, a demon masquerading as an imaginary friend, footsteps thumping in the middle of the night. Daniels incompetently checks things off his shopping list of clichés without investing in tension, pacing, or the basic construction of a scare.

The Ammons house has already been the subject of one movie (Zak Bagans’ pseudo-doc Demon House, which A.V. Club contributor Noel Murray predictably called “hooey”), and it’s barely the subject of this movie. The more compelling imagery documented by the original case—a religious mother desperately anointing her children’s foreheads with olive oil crosses and constructing an altar in her basement—are discarded in favor of a pandering character arc where a doubting Ebony finally lets Jesus into her heart.

Also discarded are the tangible realities of systemic poverty. Ebony’s family is always having wooden, on-the-nose conversations about being broke or fielding phone calls from debt collectors, but their home is spacious and well maintained (except for the demons). Shante gets the new iPhone she asks for, and Alberta continues to get her cancer treatments. Even CPS doesn’t ever seem like a real threat. The only real-world specter The Deliverance ever even tries to conjure is the concern that there’s not actually a haunting, but that it’s just an increasingly violent Ebony’s feeble excuse.

But long before that’s disproven by outrageously silly makeup and ugly effect work, we know that’s not true. The half-hearted efforts put towards seeding doubt about the extent to which the main character is beating her children is merely another distasteful flavor in this miserable meal. The gravity of child abuse contrasts, for example, with the ridiculous supporting characters that haphazardly pop up. A skeezy Omar Epps plays Alberta’s one-scene wonder of a caregiver, who seduces her by showing up at Shante’s birthday party and, finding a mic, dedicating a song “to your sexy grandmother.” This GILF hunter is never seen again.

When The Deliverance finally quits procrastinating, the plot quickly, confusingly escalates. A random exorcist (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) turns up out of the blue and finally gets down to business after an hour of straight nonsense. The only thing is, it’s not an exorcism. It’s a deliverance, which is the same thing except the demon isn’t the target—Ebony’s lack of faith is. The Deliverance is, in this way, more of a God’s Not Dead movie than a “God, Help Us Not Be Dead” movie. This all builds to a final act nearly wacky enough to justify slogging through the rest of the film; if the awful writing makes The Deliverance seem like an unwitting spoof, the filmmaking of the climax unintentionally reaches the raucous delirium of Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell.

A profane and violent movie—where the villains include Child Protective Services, medical doctors, and mental health professionals while the hero is Jesus Christ—The Deliverance is alternatingly dull and totally nuts. It is never scary, and only sometimes holds your attention. Even then, it’s usually for an off-putting reason, like considering the audacity of two men writing a graceless scene around understanding something, “Black woman to Black woman.” Lee Daniels may not have found a fitting home for his histrionic filmmaking, but at least in this genre, it can sometimes be an accidental gift.

Director: Lee Daniels
Writer: David Coggeshall, Elijah Bynum
Starring: Andra Day, Glenn Close, Mo’Nique, Anthony B. Jenkins, Miss Lawrence, Demi Singleton, Tasha Smith, Omar Epps, Caleb McLaughlin, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
Release Date: August 30, 2024 (Netflix)