The Deliverance
It left me with a rather uneven feeling. It had elements that interested me: a possession story supposedly inspired by true events, a broken family, poverty, social services, guilt, religion, a house that seems to swallow its inhabitants and a strong cast. But it never finds its balance. It begins with a family drama that is much more interesting than the horror that follows, and ends up falling into a mixture of exorcism, melodrama and odd spectacle that does not always work.
When the film speaks about an overwhelmed mother, about children living in a house full of tension, alcohol, poverty, institutional surveillance and inherited wounds, there is something uncomfortable there, and the possibility of something different. There Lee Daniels feels more confident, more interested in bodies, arguments, looks and emotional domestic violence than in pure horror.
Andra Day carries that part fairly well. Her character is often written with a very broad brush, but she manages to give her rage, exhaustion and believable desperation. She is not an idealized mother or a clean heroine: she is a damaged, harsh, contradictory woman, capable of loving and breaking at the same time. That complexity seemed much more interesting to me than the possession tricks, because there the film did have a recognizable human conflict.
Glenn Close is another of the big attractions, of course, although the film uses her in an extremely strange way. She is fully committed, that cannot be denied, and there are moments in which she imposes herself simply through presence. But there is also something in her character that brushes against excess, almost caricature, as if the film did not know whether it wanted to make her tragic, grotesque, vulnerable or downright scandalous. Not even she can fully save a whole that often fights against its own tone.
Not because religious horror bothers me, but because here it appears in a way that is too familiar and unimaginative. Voices, strange bodies, unsettling looks, screams, prayer, child possession, an improvised priest, faith as the final weapon. All of that can work if it is well built, but here it felt too derivative to me. The film wants to be serious, intense and spiritual, but several scenes end up close to ridiculous.
There is also a serious lack of measure. Daniels is not a timid director, and that can be interesting, but here excess does not always add anything. The melodrama swells, the horror raises the volume, the characters shout a lot and the film seems to trust that intensity by itself will turn everything into something deep. At times it succeeds, because there are images and emotions with force. But at times it goes too far and turns what should be unsettling into something showy and clumsy.
Mixing demonic possession with social prejudice, racism, poverty and damaged motherhood could have produced a much more special film. In fact, you can glimpse that better film hidden underneath. A version more focused on family, social services, the outside judgment placed on a Black mother and the border between illness, faith and terror would have been stronger. But every time the story finds an interesting vein, it returns to the exorcism manual.
It did not truly scare me either. It has unpleasant moments, a few striking images and some discomfort, but it does not build a threat that really gripped me. What weighs most is not the demon, but accumulated misery. And that creates a strange contradiction: when it wants to be drama, it is interesting; when it wants to be a possession film, it becomes more vulgar. Its best part is physical and familial, not in the jump scares or the spiritual battle.
Even so, I would not place it among absolute disasters. It has a cast, it has intention and it has moments where you can feel that it wants to speak about more than a haunted house. It seems failed to me, yes, but not empty. The problem is that its best ideas are surrounded by clichés, exaggerations and questionable tonal decisions. There is a decent film inside it, but it appears and disappears among screams, sermons and horror scenes we have seen too many times.
In the end, it remains a weak film with points of interest. Much better when it looks at its characters than when it looks at the demon. Andra Day and Glenn Close make an effort, the family drama has substance and the social background could have offered a lot, but the exorcism horror is predictable, noisy and sometimes involuntarily ridiculous. It did not seem like a dud with nothing in it, but it did feel like a wasted opportunity: a story with a good seed buried under too much bargain-bin possession.
When the film speaks about an overwhelmed mother, about children living in a house full of tension, alcohol, poverty, institutional surveillance and inherited wounds, there is something uncomfortable there, and the possibility of something different. There Lee Daniels feels more confident, more interested in bodies, arguments, looks and emotional domestic violence than in pure horror.
Andra Day carries that part fairly well. Her character is often written with a very broad brush, but she manages to give her rage, exhaustion and believable desperation. She is not an idealized mother or a clean heroine: she is a damaged, harsh, contradictory woman, capable of loving and breaking at the same time. That complexity seemed much more interesting to me than the possession tricks, because there the film did have a recognizable human conflict.
Glenn Close is another of the big attractions, of course, although the film uses her in an extremely strange way. She is fully committed, that cannot be denied, and there are moments in which she imposes herself simply through presence. But there is also something in her character that brushes against excess, almost caricature, as if the film did not know whether it wanted to make her tragic, grotesque, vulnerable or downright scandalous. Not even she can fully save a whole that often fights against its own tone.
Not because religious horror bothers me, but because here it appears in a way that is too familiar and unimaginative. Voices, strange bodies, unsettling looks, screams, prayer, child possession, an improvised priest, faith as the final weapon. All of that can work if it is well built, but here it felt too derivative to me. The film wants to be serious, intense and spiritual, but several scenes end up close to ridiculous.
There is also a serious lack of measure. Daniels is not a timid director, and that can be interesting, but here excess does not always add anything. The melodrama swells, the horror raises the volume, the characters shout a lot and the film seems to trust that intensity by itself will turn everything into something deep. At times it succeeds, because there are images and emotions with force. But at times it goes too far and turns what should be unsettling into something showy and clumsy.
Mixing demonic possession with social prejudice, racism, poverty and damaged motherhood could have produced a much more special film. In fact, you can glimpse that better film hidden underneath. A version more focused on family, social services, the outside judgment placed on a Black mother and the border between illness, faith and terror would have been stronger. But every time the story finds an interesting vein, it returns to the exorcism manual.
It did not truly scare me either. It has unpleasant moments, a few striking images and some discomfort, but it does not build a threat that really gripped me. What weighs most is not the demon, but accumulated misery. And that creates a strange contradiction: when it wants to be drama, it is interesting; when it wants to be a possession film, it becomes more vulgar. Its best part is physical and familial, not in the jump scares or the spiritual battle.
Even so, I would not place it among absolute disasters. It has a cast, it has intention and it has moments where you can feel that it wants to speak about more than a haunted house. It seems failed to me, yes, but not empty. The problem is that its best ideas are surrounded by clichés, exaggerations and questionable tonal decisions. There is a decent film inside it, but it appears and disappears among screams, sermons and horror scenes we have seen too many times.
In the end, it remains a weak film with points of interest. Much better when it looks at its characters than when it looks at the demon. Andra Day and Glenn Close make an effort, the family drama has substance and the social background could have offered a lot, but the exorcism horror is predictable, noisy and sometimes involuntarily ridiculous. It did not seem like a dud with nothing in it, but it did feel like a wasted opportunity: a story with a good seed buried under too much bargain-bin possession.
Mini Review: It left me with a rather uneven feeling. It had elements that interested me: a possession story supposedly inspired by true events, a broken family, poverty, social services, guilt, religion, a house that seems to swallow its inhabitants and a strong cast. But it never finds its balance. It begins with a family drama that is much more interesting than the horror that follows, and ends up falling into a mixture of exorcism, melodrama and odd...