Comment on ‘The Deliverance’ review: Lee Daniels’ supernatural thriller doesn’t deliver

Filmmaker Lee Daniels is less interested in terrifying viewers and more concerned with nudging them to find faith with “The Deliverance.” Landing on Netflix this week after a limited theatrical release, the supernatural horror thriller largely eschews jump scares in favor of a slow build to an extended exorcism sequence. That all sounds perfectly appealing — and “The Deliverance” has its strengths, some effective character-driven moments among them — but the ultimate result is a movie that lacks some punch in its first half and, like some other exorcism-based flicks that have come before it, comes across as more ridiculous than dramatically satisfying in its second. Penned by David Coggeshall (“The Family Plan”) and Elijah Bynum (“Magazine Dreams”), the latest from the director of films including “Monster’s Ball” (2001) and “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” (2013) is inspired by the alleged haunting of the Ammons family in the early 2010s in Gary, Indiana.