‘The Deliverance’ Review: Lee Daniels Directs a Demonic-Possession Movie in Which the Real Demons Are Personal (and Flamboyant)
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic As a filmmaker, Lee Daniels tends to get slagged off on for being flamboyantly garish and over-the-top.
Some of that is deserved, but the truth is that when he’s cooking on all cylinders Daniels is a gifted filmmaker. “The Deliverance” is the sixth feature he has directed, and I’ve been a fan of three of them: “Precious” (2009), his extraordinary tale of a stunted inner-city teenager’s escape from her domestic hell; “The Paperboy” (2012), a bold and unnerving Southern gothic noir; and “The United States vs.
Billie Holiday” (2021), a musical-political biopic that, while flawed, did a superb job of channeling its subject’s complicated ferocity.
So when I say that “The Deliverance,” a demonic-possession movie that Daniels made for Netflix, is one of his kitschy-extreme schlock extravaganzas, I’m not saying that he’s always like that.
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