The Deliverance begins with a modest, sincere prayer that the internet tells me comes from Watchman Nee, a Chinese evangelist from the early 1900s. The prayer goes like this: “I need forgiveness for my sins, I also need deliverance from the power of sin.”

For a good three-quarters of the film directed by Lee Daniels, we see the groundwork that needs the prayer’s assistance.

Ebony Jackson (Andra Day) is struggling with three good kids (Anthony B Jenkins, Caleb McLaughlin, Demi Singleton) and an ailing white mother (Glenn Close). Surviving on a meagre job at a hair salon, her problems have less to do with money and more to do with her own failings. Ebony is an irresponsible adult — an alcoholic, a marijuana user and a child-beater whose downward spiral is evident to everyone, including the growly social services officer (Mo’Nique), but not herself.

Daniels’ film gleefully wallows in its atmosphere. The horror is more human than demonic, though there are the routine ghastly goings-on at regular intervals — putrid smells, carcasses of cats, pigeons flying straight into windows to their deaths — you know, the usual stuff.

The greatest sin committed by The Deliverance is that it fails to live up to its horror billing

Before the demon ups its ante, and walls begin burning up around hanging crosses, dark circles grow around children’s eyes as they clamber up walls, and the family is saved by the power of the Almighty, one witnesses the real miracle take place: we see the character study of the slow, painful death of a close-knit family in a well-laid narrative.

If Daniels had stuck to that, and that alone, it would have been an entirely different, and better film. Instead, once the demon quits its peekaboos and comes face-front, The Deliverance falls flat on its face, as if the malevolent entity has tied the film’s shoelaces together.

The face-first fall, though, is no joke. Rather than laugh, one is disappointedly led to a climax that wants to be smart with its inferences. The thing is: it is not smart… not by a long shot.

Daniels is the director of the Oscar-winning Precious, and The United States vs Billie Holiday, for which Andra Day was nominated for an Oscar, and is the producer of the hit Golden Globe-winning, Emmy-nominated series, Empire. As one of the prominent voices representing today’s black cinema, The Deliverance — up to a certain extent of its runtime — delivers the goods, irrespective of its ham-fisted approach.

Like most strong-willed, forcefully insistent filmmakers, Daniels leaves little to the imagination when it comes to putting his points across. In the film, he puts the blame, the responsibilities and the salvation in the hands of women.

The Deliverance is strictly matriarchal — the men are absent in the film. Ebony’s estranged husband, who is demanding custody of the children and sends his eldest son money orders so he can leave his abusive mother’s house, is in the army — he is never shown or heard. The only other notable man in the film is a male nurse (Omar Epps) at the dialysis centre, whom the grandmother successfully seduces.

Speaking of the old woman, Close is a powerhouse. Covered in prosthetics (she has about a hundred or so strands of near-dead hair, and her body is badly wrinkled), one is immediately reminded of her Oscar-nominated work from Hillbilly Elegy, except this is a much different, but nonetheless impactful performance.

Day is okay, perhaps even good. Since while watching the film one ends up hating her character, she might’ve been doing a good enough job bringing Ebony to life.

Daniels’ film is based on a true-life incident — we’re shown pictures of Ebony’s real life counterpart Latoya Ammons, and the house possessed by the evil spirit — so, the horror element could not have been ejected from the story. It is a pity then that even the power of a good prayer could not ward off the ill-effects of the badly written evil in an otherwise engaging film.

Streaming on Netflix, The Deliverance is rated suitable for ages 18 and over, and features scenes of routine horror that makes one question whether they had been seeing a powerful film before the cheesiness happened

Published in Dawn, ICON, September 8th, 2024