The Deliverance (2024)

What in the grindhouse, tedious, just out of college indie, Walmart version of The Amityville Horror, poorly edited film did I just watch? How do you get the Dollar Tree version of The Exorcist? Get Lee Daniels to direct, apparently. When a film has a cast list that includes Glenn Close and Mo’Nique, you go in expecting good acting. The work of the adult actors in this piece is let down by the director, the script, and the editor.

Our lead, Ebony Jackson. For starters that’s a character name you’d expect from a junior in high school doing a creative writing exercise. Ebony is a very angry person. They absolutely want to hit the viewer over the head with how angry she constantly is. She will snap at any moment, but we’re also expected to believe this person wants to be the head of a loving family and wants to keep her kids. Ok. How can she afford to rent this big house doing hair part time? So they’re admittedly broke, but can throw parties, Ebony can go out drinking, she pays for her mother’s chemotherapy out of pocket in America… did the writer not sit down with a calculator? The father is fighting in Iraq, pays child support (?), and he has hundreds of extra dollars each month to send to the eldest son to eventually escape from his mother?

In one scene, her eldest son hides a bottle of vodka in the house from his mother because she’s not supposed to be drinking. Then the birthday party turns into a large friends and family drinking party, bottles everywhere, no one is concerned anymore about our lead character staying sober, let alone drinking at home whilst her children are at home. No one is afraid CPS might show up for a surprise visit on the night of the birthday of her daughter, whose birth date they have on file.

The film is plagued with so many, wait a minute, that doesn’t lead to that, this isn’t a well thought out next step for these characters, why are they doing that when we’ve already established x.

The children all on the same day… one eats poop and throws it into his teacher’s mouth. One bleeds all over the floor after making disturbingly long eye contact with the choir director in front of the entire choir. One laughs uncontrollably about AIDS and falls onto the floor laughing. That’s an instant expulsion for all three. The social worker already saw before that day that the kids had bruises. Why are the kids allowed to go back to that home? So many major things in this film are treated like nothing burgers. The eldest son tries to murder the youngest son in the tub. This is just brushed off by Ebony, everyone treats it like it never happened.

And the editing. They rush right into Mo’Nique’s epic monologue, causing it to seem disjointed, this sudden deep out of place emotion. We go straight from angry Ebony, to suddenly Mo’Nique is going hard for her second Oscar.

The film goes off the rails in Act II. The reverend shows up, but instead of the conversation in the park that Amityville gave us, we set that holy conversation type scene at a late 80’s McDonald’s for some reason. I’m sitting there thinking, is this nu-grindhouse? Why are we doing so many regressive things, when we have several great actors in this thing?

The psych ward scene. Ebony has confessed to hearing voices, strange sounds, using alcohol, weed, her children have bruises and are having so many issues… they just let her out of the hospital? The director isn’t asking us to suspend disbelief, he’s trying to force us to do it or else.

Ebony’s mother looked like she had been strangled, with the red marks on her neck. No detectives thought to question Ebony or arrest this woman who’s been in jail for anger in the past? They’re just going to leave her with the kids after hauling off Glenn Close?

This film is a mess. It’s like something a 2004 Tyler Perry would have created. Why are two A listers in this B film playing it like they’re going for an Oscar, when everyone else is playing it like they know they’re in a Netflix Exorcist ripoff?

I would love to hear your views on this film.