Reflections on ... The Deliverance (2024)

 

Recently watched: Netflix’s The Deliverance (2024). Tagline: “Every family has its demons.” 

Directed by the reliably juicy and lurid Lee Daniels (the filmmaker best known for Precious (2009) and The Paperboy (2012)), it begins as a gritty urban drama (complete with Lil’ Kim on the soundtrack) about poverty, abuse, alcoholism, and racism as we watch the troubled African American Jackson family (mother, three kids and grandmother) hoping for a fresh start by moving into a new home in blue collar Pittsburgh. But within no time, it becomes apparent the house is cursed, and The Deliverance shifts tone into berserk, traumatic down-and-dirty horror in the tradition of The Exorcist (1973) or Amityville Horror (1979). (Or more accurately, The Deliverance is like an update or variation of Abby, the 1974 Blaxploitation version of The Exorcist). All the demonic possession horror movie tropes are present and correct: possessed children scuttle up the walls. Characters suddenly adopt growling, guttural voices or speak in tongues or develop stigmata on their hands. A cross on the wall bursts into flame. When someone is sprinkled with holy water, they scream “It burns!” 

Is The Deliverance silly and cliched? Sure, and the reviews have been savage, but if you keep your expectations low it’s also a blast. And the acting is exceptional: Andra Day is ferocious as tough, beleaguered single mom Ebony Jackson, as is Mo’Nique as a no-nonsense social worker. But it’s Glenn Close - gamely sporting wig and make-up choices pitched somewhere between Tammy Faye Bakker and Rachel Dolezal - as flamboyant born again grandmother Alberta (her wildest role since playing J D Vance’s Mamaw in Hillbilly Elegy) who steals the whole thing. Alberta is the kind of part Shelley Winters or Susan Tyrrell once might have played and the way Close attacks it is pure, gleeful hagsploitation. My favourite scene: the three generations of Jackson women (grandmother, mother and granddaughter) braiding each other’s hair while watching 1967 camp classic Valley of the Dolls on TV and reciting the “Broadway doesn't go for booze and dope” dialogue off by heart. But weirdly, for such a cine-literate family, none of them seems to have watched The Exorcist!