A single mother and her family are haunted by malevolent spirits in the ‘Precious’ director’s latest feature, co-starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Mo’Nique.

Lee Daniels’ The Deliverance is, on the one hand, a typical and considered domestic drama about a matriarch (Andra Day) balancing family obligations, alcoholism and a tempestuous relationship with her mother (Glenn Close). On the other hand, it represents the director’s foray into the supernatural. Here, Daniels, the director of slushy films like Precious and The Butler, digs into hauntings and, from them, extracts lessons in faith. It’s possible for both narrative threads to co-exist or intertwine harmoniously, and the film’s structure reveals Daniels’ intention for them to inform one another. But The Deliverance is too choppy an affair, and the mix rarely achieves total coherence.  

As they set up, Ebony’s mother Alberta (Close) worships at church with the older kids, Shante (Demi Singleton) and Nate (Caleb McLaughlin). Later scenes reveal the tensions brewing within the family: Alberta, a recent inductee to Christianity, criticizes how Ebony, a lapsed alcoholic, raises the kids. The children, meanwhile, are worn down by their chronic poverty and itinerant lifestyle. The absence of their father — recently deployed to war — looms at the dinner table. 

The direction here is confident and the scenes are anchored by intimate shots (the DP is Eli Arenson) of each family member. Most of the detailing happens within Ebony and Alberta’s relationship. Here, Daniels explores, again in broad but not insufficient strokes, the pressures and tensions between a biracial daughter and her white mother. In the margins of this family’s life stands Cynthia (Mo’Nique marking a return to working with Daniels), a case worker from the Child Protective Services tasked with investigating whether Ebony abuses her kids. 

She does, and Daniels presents these moments not as sensationalistic transgressions but the disturbing result of generations of trauma. Before Alberta found Jesus, she also abused Ebony. Day, who worked with Daniels on The United States vs. Billie Holiday, proves her range again in The Deliverance. She doesn’t sand down Ebony’s rougher edges with melodramatic physicality but instead explores her coarseness, finding soft filaments within the single mother’s bristly temperament. Day lives up to her character’s responsibilities as matriarch, too, giving the other actors a sturdy anchor for their performances. Here, unlike in other parts of The Deliverance, there is a semblance of cohesion. 

The supernatural instigates fissures in both Ebony’s family and Daniels’ film. A typical pattern of ghostly presence begins: creaking doors, strange footsteps, a dead crow. Andre begins talking with someone named Tre, a figure who asks him to do devious deeds. But Daniels struggles with pacing here, overestimating our patience for anticipation. Eventually, the demons possess Ebony’s kids and the mother finds herself desperate for help. She finds salvation in Rev. Bernice James (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, brief but impactful).