Much like the demonic forces that lurk in its shadows, there’s a good movie hidden away in The Deliverance. The trouble is, it’s buried so deep, you only catch fleeting glimpses of it. Following a family that’s being haunted by something profoundly sinister, the latest movie from director Lee Daniels – best known for the soapier likes of Precious, The Butler, and The United States vs. Billie Holiday – marks what could be an intriguing foray into horror. It gestures towards deeper questions about who gets not just abandoned but attacked in times of crisis by systems ostensibly meant to help. Alas, in addition to only superficially exploring these ideas, The Deliverance isn’t confident enough as either supernatural horror or pointed drama, ultimately doing a grave disservice to both genres.
Similarly wronged is the central character of Ebony. Played well by Oscar-nominated The United States vs. Billie Holiday star Andra Day, Ebony is carrying a heavy weight on her shoulders. In addition to struggling with alcoholism, she’s attempting to raise her three children – Nate (Caleb McLaughlin), Shante (Demi Singleton), and Andre (Anthony B. Jenkins) – alone while navigating a complicated relationship with her abrasive and ailing mother Alberta (Glenn Close). This becomes even more complicated when the family is threatened by a demon that seems to emerge from within their Pittsburgh home.
The Deliverance is loosely inspired by the case of Latoya Ammons and family, whose claims of demonic infestation in their Gary, Indiana home made headlines in the early 2010s. And though it's not very good, at least it’s better than the last film someone tried to make about the Ammons haunting – the tiresome “documentary” Demon House, directed by Ghost Adventures host Zak Bagans – though that’s not saying much. Where Bagans was exploited the situation by cashing in with what was essentially an overstretched episode of his Travel Channel show, Daniels at least seems interested in the far more complicated questions of race, class, and inequality that underpin the event. The Deliverance has its heart in the right place – though there’s no pulse in how it proceeds.
For much of the early goings, we come to see the sociological fault lines that are pushing Ebony and family to a breaking point. The root causes aren’t paranormal as much as they are systemic, with the injustices that govern American life hanging over the proceedings. However, when social worker from hell Cynthia Henry (Mo'Nique) comes in and proclaims “I got you now, Ebony Jackson,” any potent observations fall apart. Rather than feel like the embodiment of the structural forces that can harm those like the Jacksons, Cynthia’s animosity towards Ebony is oddly personal. This undercuts how Daniels seems to want to use his horror film as a greater thematic or metaphorical point of reflection. Instead, it increasingly narrows in focus the longer it carries on.
There is an important conversation to be had about all the ways the real-life Ammons were failed by society, but The Deliverance is not the film to start it. Daniels seems to be attempting to do so under the guise of horror, but his movie largely plays as a much more meandering drama that can’t ever quite figure out what it wants to hone in on. It’s a warts-and-all depiction of Ebony – we see her drinking and the trauma she carries with her from an abusive childhood that she’s now passing on to her kids – though it’s played far too broad to cut deep. After a long and frequently awkward buildup that never strikes anything close to genuine dread (let alone fear), the half-hearted horror elements come rushing in. In a film this stiffly made, the sudden and unsubtle introduction of imagery lifted from better, scarier movies threatens to bring everything crashing down around it.
At one point, the script – from David Coggeshall and and Elijah Bynum, screenwriters of the the bonkers Orphan: First Kill and the punishing Magazine Dreams, respectively – tries to get ahead of this by namechecking The Exorcist. But rather than putting that movie out of our minds so The Deliverance can explore its own ideas about belief and suffering, this self-aware moment just calls attention to the artifice at play. You’ll then wish you were watching William Friedkin’s superior slow descent into darkness instead. As The Deliverance tries to carve out its own horrifying path, the entire conclusion completely comes apart at the seams, lacking the gravitas to capture either the mind or the soul. It ends on such cloyingly forced notes about faith providing salvation that your head may spin around just watching it.
