When Lee (Precious) Daniels makes a horror movie, you know you’re in for… well… something. Ebony (Andra Day) moves her family into a new house and before they can even get settled in, cliched horror shit starts happening left and right. Flies are buzzing around like it’s The Amityville Horror and her young son is talking to ghosts like in The Sixth Sense. Pretty soon, the kids are winding up with mysterious bruises, and CPS starts making calls to the house, but is Ebony the one putting hands on her kids? Or is there a demon possessing them?
Glenn Close is the MVP here. She gamely chews the scenery as Day’s feisty mother who lives with the family and wears a rather hilarious collection of meemaw attire. She doesn’t even let the fact that she’s going through chemotherapy stop her from trying to pick up men half her age.
Knowing that this was directed by Lee Daniels, you may be tempted to think it’s going to be Precious Meets the Exorcist. While that’s not quite the vibe, it’s pretty darn close. The early scenes of parental neglect and abuse are like Precious, but with a bunch of supernatural occurrences.
Even as far as cheesy Exorcist rip-offs go, there is some crazy shit here. Remember that scene in The Exorcist when Regan was sleepwalking and peed herself? Daniels ups the ick factor by having one of the possessed kids take a shit in the middle of class and THROW it at his teacher. Ellen Burstyn got off light.
Speaking of The Exorcist, here’s another tweak on the usual formula: Remember the infamous spider walk scene? Well in this one the kid walks up the walls like Spider-Man! Another hilarious wrinkle comes during the “deliverance” when the kid takes the form of Close who starts cursing like a sailor.
It’s moments like this that make The Deliverance trashy fun. Some may take issue with the way Daniels portrays casual child abuse, but the undiluted depiction is what makes it work. I don’t think we’ve seen a haunted house/possession flick like this since Amityville 2 (minus the incest angle).
I also liked the way Daniels kept it real. Like, in most possession movies when the mom consults a priest, they meet in a church or something. In The Deliverance, they meet at a McDonald’s. I’m loving it.
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