Studio: Netflix
Director: Lee Daniels
Writer: David Coggeshall, Elijah Bynum
Producer: Lee Daniels, Tucker Tooley, Pamela Oas Williams, Jackson Nguyen, Todd Crites
Stars: Andra Day, Glenn Close, Mo'Nique, Anthony B. Jenkins, Miss Lawrence, Demi Singleton, Tasha Smith, Omar Epps, Caleb McLaughlin, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
Review Score:
Summary:
An alcoholic mother suspected of child abuse confronts her family's demons when her youngest son becomes possessed.
Review:
Upon hearing of a notoriously haunted home in Gary, Indiana, paranormal investigation personality Zak Bagans purchased the property, supposedly sight unseen, and turned some of its story into the 2018 documentary "Demon House" (review here). Before Bagans bought it, the house belonged to Latoya Ammons, who became something of a local sensation with her claims, some of which were corroborated by authorities, that a supernatural presence terrorized her family until they finally fled.
Early on in "Demon House," Bagans attempts to interview Ammons and her mother about their eerie encounters, but the women refuse on the grounds Bagans could bring the evil entity back to them since he had been inside the home. Coincidentally, the documentary later adds that Ammons and her mother were working with a Hollywood producer on adapting their story, which skeptics might suspect had more to do with staying out of Bagans's conflicting project than fear of being cursed again.
"The Deliverance" appears to be that dramatized account of "true events" Ammons was attached to. It apparently wasn't cheap, either. According to a Deadline article, Netflix beat out six other bidders for the film by ponying up $65 million to cover the $30 million production budget plus additional buyouts. I cannot fathom why anyone would pay a pretty penny for the rights to a specific story only to then change the details that make that story specific, yet that's what happens with "The Deliverance."
Speculation suggests the movie moved out of Indiana in favor of a Pittsburgh location perhaps because Pennsylvania offered a better tax credit. I can't come up with a reason why "The Deliverance" is set in 2011 when the Ammons family was actually affected in 2014 though, because what difference do those three years make? The main names are changed too, even though Latoya Ammons has an associate producer credit and epilogue text devoted to her. It's bizarre for the filmmakers to alter inconsequential facts to render true story identifiers extinct, yet keep themselves chained to the tedious domestic drama behind it all when they could have been far more entertaining with something totally original instead.
Ebony Jackson has it hard. Since her estranged husband is overseas in Iraq, she's effectively a single mother. With her teenage son Nate, teenage daughter Shante, and youngest son Andre, she just moved from Philly to Pittsburgh into a rundown home infested with flies, strange smells, and a dead cat rotting in the basement. Her difficult mother Alberta moved in as well, as if Ebony didn't already have her hands full. They're literally full too, as she's illustrated as a multitask master furiously folding laundry while her shoulder pins a persistent creditor's phone call to her annoyed ear.
It's no wonder Ebony drinks. Alcohol isn't an excuse for her abusive actions, although it is a chief reason why she's short tempered with her children, and plays a part in physically punishing her underprivileged kids. When mom isn't laying hands on them, neighborhood corner boys bully both brothers. Meanwhile, sister Shante commiserates with their disappeared dad through texts typed out on a cellphone's broken screen.
For homebound movie night, everyone watches that favorite family classic, "Valley of the Dolls." The Jacksons watch it so often, Nate and Andre quietly laugh at the ladies reciting each line from memory while doing each other's hair. Even that ends in an argument, however, as does a birthday party where Ebony imbibes too much booze and Andre's increasingly odd behavior finally comes out in the open.
After an incredibly indulgent 40 minutes of setting up this stereotypical scenario, approximately 30 minutes longer than any average viewer needs to understand this is a put-upon family living in poverty, a smack to its skull reminds "The Deliverance" it's supposed to include supernatural horror in its overserved helping of maudlin melodrama. Ebony finds Andre banging his face against the cellar door. He says an invisible man named Trey tells him to do bad things, and if there's anything we know about common fright film tropes, it's that imaginary friends are definitely a doorway to danger.
At this point, there's still a full hour to go in the movie. Empty minutes aren't going to fill themselves, and there are only so many scenes we can stomach where everyone calls each other "bitch" over and over again, so "The Deliverance" fills in that space with secondary characters who don't serve any critical functions. Omar Epps is high in the credits, but low on the onscreen totem pole as the partner in a go-nowhere romance with Glenn Close, who may or may not have been originally written to be a white woman, for a total of two scenes. Mo'Nique gets more real estate as a DCS case worker who's consistently concerned about Ebony's children, yet when one looks back on what she actually does in the film, you'll see only momentary bumps in the road without her becoming a true obstacle for Ebony or a facilitator of freedom for the kids.
Taking longer than any other parent in this familiar cinematic conflict, Ebony eventually accepts her son is demonically possessed and turns to a woman for help. The woman isn't a priest. She's a self-proclaimed "apostle, prophet, evangelist" who goes where God sends her, whatever that means. Not being part of the Church, she can't perform an exorcism. She can perform "the deliverance," which is basically the same thing, just with extra mumbo-jumbo about Jesus Christ being the intercessor summoned to cast out demonic influence. Cue the standard scenes of growling in deep voices, contorting backwards, levitating, etc. If you've seen it in any other exorcism movie, you'll see it here, too.
On the surface, one might think the movie's message about Jesus being both the salvation and the salve for fixing a fractured family provides an honorable ending. Except it ignores reality for Ebony to rescue her family not by accepting responsibility for her role in creating their situation, but to gift her with a shortcut by having a sudden renewal of faith save the day.
Director Lee Daniels initially keeps some of the violence affecting the siblings ambiguous. Maybe Ebony beats her kids in drunken stupors. Maybe something unseen behind a closed door is at fault. That's a problematic suggestion in its own right, but Daniels makes matters worse when his movie definitively declares a demon unfairly targeted the family for no real reason other than they moved into the wrong house at the wrong time.
I'll say the same thing about "The Deliverance" that I said about "Demon House." In presenting a poor family confronting emotional trauma, cyclical patterns of abuse, and dire dynamics inside a house whose dilapidated condition contributes to declining health, it's in poor taste at best and irresponsible at worst to pin the blame on an imaginary being rather than the true causes of domestic violence and impoverished living. "The Deliverance" is already clunkily constructed as a routine drama populated by people the plot doesn't need, haphazardly shoehorned horror elements recycled from dozens of other demonic possession yarns, and characterizations that are cartoonish for how aggressively exaggerated they are. Thoughtless takeaways only add to the bad flavor left in your mouth, made worse by the nearly two hours it takes to grimacingly gulp everything down.
Review Score: 30
“The Soul Eater” probably works better as a book since it’s not quite the movie seemingly sold by the art or the pedigree of its directors.