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    • Lee Daniels’ Netflix horror film doesn’t scare
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    Lee Daniels’ Netflix horror film doesn’t scare

    Vaseline Posted on

    Like the demonic forces lurking in its shadows, there’s a good movie hidden within The Deliverance. The problem is that it’s buried so deep that you only catch fleeting glimpses of it. The latest film from director Lee Daniels, best known for his soap opera-like films Wonderful, The ButlerAnd The United States vs. Billie Holiday – marks what could be an intriguing foray into horror. It points to deeper questions about who is not only abandoned but attacked in times of crisis by systems ostensibly meant to help. Unfortunately, beyond its superficial exploration of these ideas, The Deliverance doesn’t feel confident enough as either a supernatural horror or a focused drama, ultimately doing both genres a disservice.

    The same injustice is done to lead character Ebony. Ebony, played well by Oscar-nominated The United States vs. Billie Holiday star Andra Day, carries a heavy burden on her shoulders. On top of her struggle with alcoholism, she’s trying to raise her three children—Nate (Caleb McLaughlin), Shante (Demi Singleton), and Andre (Anthony B. Jenkins)—along with a complicated relationship with her abusive and ailing mother, Alberta (Glenn Close). This is made even more complicated when the family is threatened by a demon that seemingly looms over 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 while it’s not very good, it’s at least better than the last movie anyone tried to make about the Ammons haunting—the tired “documentary” Demon House , directed by Ghost Adventures host Zak Bagans—though that’s not saying much. Where Bagans exploited the situation by cashing in on what was essentially an overwrought episode of his Travel Channel show, Daniels at least seems interested in the much more complicated issues of race, class, and inequality that underlie the event. The Deliverance has its heart in the right place—even if it has no heartbeat in how it proceeds.

    Early on, we see the sociological fault lines that drive Ebony and her family to their breaking point. The root causes aren’t so much paranormal as systemic, with the injustices that permeate American life hanging over the proceedings. But when hellish social worker Cynthia Henry (Mo’Nique) enters and yells, “I’ve got you now, Ebony Jackson,” all of these powerful observations fall apart. Rather than feeling like the embodiment of the structural forces that could harm people like the Jacksons, Cynthia’s hostility toward Ebony is oddly personal. This undermines how Daniels seems to want to use his horror film as a larger thematic or metaphorical point of reflection. Instead, the focus narrows as it goes on.

    There’s an important conversation to be had about all the ways the real Ammons were abandoned by society, but The Deliverance isn’t the film to begin it. Daniels seems to be trying to do this under the guise of horror, but his film largely plays out as a meandering drama that can never quite figure out where it wants to go. It’s a portrayal of Ebony in all her flaws—we see her drinking and the trauma she carries with her from an abusive childhood that she’s now passing on to her children—but it’s played far too broadly to cut deep. After a long and often uncomfortable buildup that never comes close to delivering any real fear (let alone terror), the half-hearted horror elements kick in. In a film this stiffly made, the sudden and unsubtle introduction of imagery lifted from better, scarier movies threatens to bring everything around it crashing down.

    At some point the script came along – from David Coggeshall and Elijah Bynum, screenwriters of the crazy Be: First Death and the punishment Dreams Magazinerespectively – tries to anticipate this by naming names The Exorcist. But rather than dismissing that film from our minds so The Deliverance can explore its own ideas about faith and suffering, this self-aware moment draws attention to the artifice at work. It’ll make you wish you were watching William Friedkin’s superior slow descent into darkness instead. As The Deliverance tries to carve out its own horrific path, the entire conclusion falls apart, lacking the seriousness to engage the mind or soul. It ends on such cloying, forced notes about faith as salvation that your head can start spinning just watching it.

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