This article contains major character or plot details.
Something wicked is lurking in Ebony Jackson’s new home. It’s in the walls, in the air — and now it’s possessing her children. The Deliverance has a familiar setup: family moves into new home; home is possessed by supernatural force of unspeakable malevolence; family is tormented by said evil spirit. But Ebony (played by Oscar nominee Andra Day) will need more than just an exorcist to save her family. “I didn’t see it as a horror film, at least not in the way people have come to expect,” director Lee Daniels (Precious) told Netflix.
For the cast and crew, The Deliverance was more than a fright fest; it was a story about a broken family that happened to also include a demonic entity. “This is a story with a social justice message that deals with family trauma, PTSD, and cyclical brokenness,” Day told Netflix. “It’s a story about family, faith, restoration, and reconciliation. It’s a story about a mother doing what she can with her resources to protect and care for her kids. There’s a lot of layers and the icing on the cake is that it’s also a horror movie.”
As the film reaches its climax, those different themes collide in a hellish confrontation with an otherworldly force. But that isn’t the end of the story. Read on to find out exactly what happens at the end of The Deliverance — and how it changes the Jacksons forever.
What is haunting the Jacksons?
As the Jackson family starts to adjust to their new home in Pittsburgh, Ebony’s youngest son Andre (Anthony B. Jenkins) starts acting strange — talking to the walls, conversing with an imaginary friend named Trey, banging his head against things without warning. A woman is following Ebony, flies are buzzing around the home, and things feel wrong. Ebony struggles to deal with the bizarre new setting, and her mother Alberta (eight-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close) is always available to serve up a judgmental comment. Her husband, back in Philadelphia, is no help.
Mother and daughter’s difficult relationship gets even more complicated when Alberta begins to believe ex-alcoholic Ebony is drinking again — and abusing her kids. “I have every reason to believe that my daughter is starting to beat her kids,” Close says of Alberta’s mindset. “That’s how it slips into the demon really feeding off the family.” Ebony has her own qualms with her mother in turn: she remembers all too well the poor example she set when Ebony was a child, and Alberta’s new turn towards the church has not convinced her.
When social worker Cynthia (Oscar winner Mo’Nique) gets involved, things go from bad to worse for Ebony. Cynthia is a principled and empathetic person, but the evidence seems clear that Ebony is hurting her children. “[Cynthia] works because she wants to, not because she has to,” Mo’Nique told Netflix. “She’s a social worker because she wants to make a difference. She wants to make things better and wants to see the goodness in people. Has she ever judged it and called it wrong? In this case, yes.”
Soon, all three of the Jackson children are acting up at school: tossing their own waste around the classroom, intentionally menstruating in front of their classmates, and cackling at a teacher who’s telling a tragic family story. To the outside observer, this looks like abused or neglected kids acting out. Ebony knows that something darker is happening here, and sets out in search of answers — but not soon enough to save her mother, who faces the demon with Bible in hand and fails to defeat it. When Ebony finds her mother dead on the floor with a cross burning on the wall, the final phase of the demon’s game has begun.
Who is following Ebony?
Ebony gets some insight into what she’s facing when she finally sits down with Bernice (Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), the mysterious woman who’s been following her. Bernice has her own history with the demon, but she’s not a magic bullet that will save Ebony from its clutches; Ebony will have to do that herself. “They’re separate from what’s happening with the other characters in the story and the only person she really has any contact with is Ebony,” Ellis-Taylor told Netflix. “So she really felt like a standalone character in a way.”
Bernice tells Ebony that the home she’s living in has a tragic history: a mother killed her entire family after her son succumbed to a demon that Bernice failed to defeat. The name of her son? Trey, the same name that Andre has been whispering to the air.
Bernice implores Ebony to fight back against the demon with faith. Ellis-Taylor struggled to understand her devout character, until consultant Apostle Louis Dickens helped her find her way in. “I was very candid with him about my belief system,” Ellis-Taylor said. “And he said, wherever I was on the spectrum, ‘This may not be where you are in your own life, but you must believe that Ebony requires justice.’ And that was something I could dig into. Whether it was the laying on of hands or getting rid of a demon, my job in this film was to find justice for her and to fight for her.”
For Ebony, nothing — even her skepticism towards religion — is more important than her children. Day carried that motivation on set with her young colleagues (Caleb McLaughlin, Demi Singleton, and Anthony B. Jenkins). “I learned about them and truly fell in love with them,” Day said. “Not just their characters, but them as real people, and I learned how they needed to be loved. It wasn’t hard; they are wonderful to be around and being a mother is a desire that I have, so I just poured all of that into them. I saw them as my kids and treated them that way on and off set.”
What is a deliverance?
Bernice introduces Ebony to the concept of a deliverance: an exorcism where Jesus Christ serves as the intercessor. “If you act in the power and the authority of Jesus Christ, you can touch a body and the demon will run,” she tells Ebony. It’s a difficult story for Ebony to swallow, but as things with her children continue to go downhill, she may have to try anyway.
After Cynthia takes her two older children away, Ebony brings Bernice home to confront the possessed Andre, who’s now crawling around and speaking in foul-mouthed tongues. Once secured, Andre changes shape to another familiar face: the deceased Alberta.
It’s a twist that ties the film’s demonic-possession narrative to its themes of inherited trauma. “I think that it’s a genius way to show what it takes to break the generational cycles of abuse in a family,” Close says. “It takes looking into the darkness and having the strength to confront it and to fight it and to overcome it.”
It’s a shocking transformation for Close’s character, from a spray-tanned widow to a pointy-toothed succubus. For Daniels, both of Alberta’s guises are the embodiment of her daughter’s fears and anxieties. “He told me that there were women like this in the Black community that every Black person knows,” Close says. “Then he said, ‘I’ll teach you.’”
“What happens when a mother is white and has Black children, Black grandkids, and lives in a world that’s Black?” Daniels asked. “Alberta is a woman that people in my community know. This is a woman I’ve seen many times throughout my life.”
For Close, the opportunity to play Alberta had a simple appeal. “What made me want to be involved is that I did not have a clue in the world how to play her,” Close says. “It was such new territory for me, and that is like putting a piece of meat in front of a tigress. You just have to go for it.”
So that’s how Glenn Close found herself playing a demonic entity in The Deliverance — but how does Ebony escape her? Not with the help of Bernice, who’s quickly dispatched by the demon. She leaves Ebony with a vial of holy water and next to no hope — especially as the demon changes shape again into Ebony herself, literalizing her internal struggle. But Ebony soon turns the tide, calling for aid from Jesus and channeling her love for her children into a powerful deliverance that sends the demon running back to hell.
With the help of a now-understanding Cynthia, Ebony wins back custody of her children and sets off to try to mend things with her estranged husband in Philadelphia. Evil may have been defeated, but there’s still work to do.
Is The Deliverance based on a true story?
In part. As the end credits reveal, The Deliverance is drawn from the true story of LaToya Ammons, whose Indiana home was allegedly haunted by spirits. “Because this was based on a true story, there was some hesitation on my end around touching it. So I let it sit for a while,” Daniels said. But the filmmaker ultimately found his way into the story when he realized it was about faith as much as it was about fear. “In the story, LaToya Ammons finds Jesus,” he said. “And I felt, with everything going on in the world, we all needed that. We all need to find a higher power.”
The Deliverance is now streaming on Netflix.
