The Deliverance is Lee Daniels’s first foray into horror filmmaking. The director of Precious (2009) and creator of television’s “Empire” has demonstrated a penchant for moody, atmospheric familial drama, and he deploys that skillset in this film. But the addition of gore, a creepy old house, generational trauma, deadly illness and a seemingly endless swarm of flies takes The Deliverance fully into scary movie territory just in time for spooky streaming season. The film’s plot and director of photography Eli Arenson’s camera moves in a slow, rotten creep. The deliberate pacing and intimate camera shots work in service of the movie’s real strength: its characters and the performances that bring them to life. It’s a smart movie that finds Lee keenly trading on his proven talents while clearly having a lot of fun playing haunted house.
Ebony Jackson is raising three kids in their new home in Pittsburgh in 2011. Her oldest son Nate, teen daughter Shante, young son Dre, and Ebony’s mom are all living in the house after several recent moves. Ebony struggles to keep up with the bills with the addition of her mother’s cancer treatments. Ebony has moments where her generosity and warmth shine through, but she’s also an abusive alcoholic and the chaotic center of the family now that her soldier husband is stationed in Iraq.
The Deliverance is based on supposed real events related by Latoya Ammons’s family in Gary Indiana. Ammons and her children claim that they actually experienced some of the movie’s weirdest scenes, and the “true story” aspect of The Deliverance adds another layer to the movie’s horrific happenings. Of course the combination of alcoholism and a haunted house brings Stephen King’s novel, The Shining and Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of that book to mind. The Deliverance never copycats Kubrick’s masterpiece, but the fact that Daniels’s film reads like a contemporary, black re-telling of the book and the film’s central themes certainly works in its favor. The Deliverance takes its time introducing its characters and illuminating the tensions — and bonds — between the members of the multigenerational family. But by the time all hell starts to break loose at Shante’s birthday party, viewers will find they’re already trapped under the spell of this fun and frightening film.
Andra Day plays Ebony, and Glenn Close plays her mother. They’re both great here, with Day able to make audiences care about and connect with the mostly unlikable Ebony. Anthony B. Jenkins’s portrayal of the haunted little Dre and Mo’Nique’s scene-stealing turn as DCS worker also deserve special notice. The Deliverance was written by David Coggeshall and Elijah Bynum and the movie offers that rare combination of a strong cast with a strongly scripted world to inhabit. Daniels does them both justice, delivering the kind of interpersonal dramatics the director is known for, along with demonstrating a hitherto unknown flair for creepy vibes and over-the-top supernatural special effects sequences.
By the time The Deliverance draws audiences into the home’s spooky basement for its demonic showdown finale, it mostly deals in standard exorcism film tropes, but it’s fine. The movie’s first half elevates itself beyond typical horror fare with everything from its performances to its production design, and the less original sequences in the third act don’t disappoint because what’s a haunted house movie if we’re not going to have a showdown with a demon?
Every year I save up a lot of new horror movies and then binge them all before Halloween. The Deliverance was my first taste of this year’s frightening feast, and I’m not afraid to tell you, it was bloody good.
The Deliverance is now streaming on Netflix
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.