William Friedkin’s horror classic The Exorcist took the horror genre to whole other level back in 1973. Unlike other scary movies that preceded it, it was purportedly based on actual, supernatural events, including demonic possession and the little-known, ancient Catholic rite required to save the soul of Satan’s helpless victim. The story was terrifying. The special effects were unnerving. The Exorcist went on to make a ton of money and give rise to a slew of movies about exorcism over the year that followed.
It was a tough act to top. The Exorcist II in 1977, proved that it was difficult, if not impossible to improve on the original, even with Richard Burton in the starring role.
Now comes Lee Daniels’s attempt to breathe fire and brimstone into exorcism movies. Daniels famously made his mark as a director with The Butler in 2013. The question here was whether he could adapt to this dark story material.
As with The Exorcist, the script for The Deliverance was inspired by events that took place in Gary, Indiana and were reported by journalist Marisa Kwiatkowski in a 2014 Indianapolis Star article, “The Exorcism of Latoya Ammons.” The recent New York Times article, “What to Know About the Real Story That Inspired ‘The Deliverance’" sorts fact from fiction and the facts are stranger and more disturbing that one might expect.
Again, in movies like this, they are the shreds of truth woven into the story to establish some degree of authenticity—enough to scare the bejesus out of the audience.
Here, it begins with strange noises, rancid smells and swarms of repulsive flies. Children begin having creepy conversations with imaginary beings and eventually all hell breaks loose. Family members levitate, unleash tirades of vulgar language and attempt to kill each other.
It’s a lot for a struggling, black, single mom, Ebony (played by Andra Day) to handle. Her fractured family includes three kids and a white witch of a mother-in-law played by Glenn Close. Close’s Alberta is a spiteful, hateful old woman undergoing chemotherapy when she’s not busting Ebony for being a bad mom.
The Deliverance serves up a lot of backstory and character development which is sometimes skipped over in movies like this. If you don’t get to know the characters, you can never really care about them. Here, we get to know them a little too much, stretching out the setup leading to the supernatural events that we paid to see.
Technically, The Deliverance is a solid film from the standpoint of art direction, shooting and editing. Where it falls short is in the storytelling. That is to say, the script and direction.
The movie rolls out all the raunchy requirements for a demonic tale like this in terms of shocking dialog and bizarre behavior. The problem is that we have seen all this before, and we have seen it done better. I’m speaking again of William Friedkin and his movie mastery, evidenced in every frame of The Exorcist, right down to its chilling, unnerving use of experimental sound effects editing.
The Deliverance tries but fails to raise the quotient of fear and terror that The Exorcist unleashed a half century ago. That movie was a horror tale perfectly told. It’s hard to improve on perfection, but that doesn’t stop movie studios from trying. They know that there is an audience out there waiting to buy tickets to see something that is scary, deeply disturbing and not easy to dismiss.
For some strange reason, we all like a good scare from time to time. And as much as movies about demonic possession terrify us, we can’t resist the temptation to contemplate the dark idea that Satan and pure evil are both alive and well.
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