The Deliverance (2024), directed by Lee Daniels, stars Andra Day, Glenn Close, Anthony B. Jenkins, Mo’Nique, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Caleb McLaughlin, Demi Singleton, Omar Epps, and Miss Lawrence. The film follows a family who begins to experience strange occurrences in their Indiana home. Because of struggles with alcoholism, the family’s mother, Ebony (Day), receives regular visits from social services. When the strange occurrences cause minor injuries to her children, she begins to be suspected of child abuse. With the help of her estranged mother (Close) and a local reverend (Ellis-Taylor), Ebony sets out to save her children from the demonic forces lurking in their home and clear her name in the process.

Although the performances here are mostly strong (especially Glenn Close), the characters are written to be pretty unlikeable. The film often asks the audience to forgive the various characters’ immaturity because, at the end of the day, they love their families. That’s great and all, but MOST people love their families, even people who aren’t very likable. It’s just not enough to redeem them in terms of likability when considering all the other immature and stupid decisions they make. This being said, the characters still feel decently compelling regardless of likability. I think this is because the first half of the story spends a good amount of time establishing them and their various tensions. There’s also some very great back-and-forth dialogue that adds to the intensity of the film even in its quieter moments. Although the scares don’t kick in for almost forty minutes, it doesn’t seem to matter because it’s so compelling. 

Because the first half of the film is so effective in establishing its characters, it’s only all the more disappointing that the second devolves into a cliche exorcism movie. It rips images straight out of movies such as The Exorcist (1973) and Hereditary (2018), making the entire experience feel familiar even in its darkest moments. It features the token creepy kid staring at dead animals and crawling like a demon which only makes the viewer yawn. A lot of these scary scenes are also so ridiculous and random that just end up coming across as unintentionally funny. It also doesn’t help that the CGI used often looks cheap and therefore goofy.

By the time the credits roll, the film also seems to abandon a majority of the themes it establishes in the first half. Instead of exploring the horrifying nature of both physical and substance abuse, it devolves into a simple message of “believe in God and everything will be hunky dory.” Regardless of where you stand on religion, this is basic and unoriginal. 

This brings me to one of my biggest flaws with the film. The story is said to be based on a true story, with the real-life woman it’s based on being shown to have eventually reobtained custody of her children. I don’t know the details of the real-life case, but the problem is, if the story is anything similar to what’s presented in the film, the real-life “Ebony” comes across as a shameless child abuser if the viewer stops to think. If you don’t believe in ghosts, then it seems like the woman was just using them as an excuse for abusing her children. If ghosts aren’t real, it’s pretty clear what was going on. It’s just a poorly written aspect of this script that I can’t believe no one noticed earlier in the production process.

Overall, this is a horror film with a promising first half that eventually just devolves into typical genre tropes. The characters are compelling but also not very likable. This could have been saved by a sharper script that makes the characters answer for their mistakes, but instead just blindly asks us to root for them in its’ unoriginal third act. This is yet another Netflix release that’s forgettable in every sense of the word. C-