The critics couldn’t do much with the Netflix horror film The Deliverance. But that doesn’t stop the streamer’s subscribers from clicking on it
It’s not quite Halloween fall yet and yet a horror title is already at number 1 in the Netflix movie charts. The Deliverance by director Lee Daniels doesn’t come off very well with the critics and also only has a 4.2 in the Moviepilot community’s overall user rating, but if you want to manifest Halloween early, the film is definitely an option
The Deliverance on Netflix: This is what the horror flick, which is number 1 in the movie charts, is all about
Single parent Ebony Jackson (Andra Day) wants to make a fresh start in Pittsburgh with her three sons (including Stranger Things star Caleb McLaughlin) and her frail mother Alberta (Glenn Close). When sinister things start happening in her new home, she first turns to the unhelpful neighbors and is eventually given support by social worker Cynthia (Mo’Nique). Pastor Bernice (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) also gets involved and suggests a more drastic measure: An exorcism.
Watch the German Netflix trailer for The Deliverance here:
Religious-themed exorcism films are currently back in vogue, just think of Late Night with the Devil, Immaculate, The First Omen or The Exorcism from the recent past. So while The Deliverance taps directly into the diabolical zeitgeist, it was less to the taste of the critics.
On Rotten Tomatoes the Tomatometer is at just 32 percent, while audiences are, as always, somewhat milder in their judgment, with the Metacritic score also low at just 38. Lovia Gyarkye of the Hollywood Reporter wrote, for example:
“[Daniels’] desire to elicit explicit meaning from the mother’s experience and push the audience toward a single conclusion unwittingly places The Deliverance in dour and disappointingly cartoonish territory.
Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian at least came up with the amusing phrase: “This movie is covered in a thick ectoplasm of disappointment.”
If you have 112 minutes to spare, you can watch the horror show for yourself on Netflix from August 16, 2024
