Netflix's new number one movie is a horror from a surprising director

Netflix has a new number one movie, and it’s a film with a couple of interesting figures involved.

The Deliverance is a horror movie from Lee Daniels, better known for dramas like The Butler and Precious. And it stars cinematic legend Glenn Close as the belligerent bother of a family plagued by demons.

This is a demonic possession film but, as you might expect from Lee Daniels, it comes with a healthy serving of family drama too.

The real star of The Deliverance is Andra Day, a singer who also starred in Daniels’s The United States Vs. Billie Holiday.

She plays Ebony, a mother of three whose children are seemingly being attacked by demons in Gary, Indiana. It's (very) roughly based on the true story.

The film peaked number one in 46 countries across the world, and we already have Netflix’s first few days of viewing figures for The Deliverance.

It was watched 14.5 million times, and enters the Netflix Tudum chart at position three, among English language movies. But it only represents the movie’s first three days on stream.

The Deliverance reviews

What did the critics say? They weren’t all that keen, largely concluding The Deliverance doesn’t excel either as a horror film or a drama of worthy themes — which is more Lee Daniels’s home turf.

Empire gave the film 2/5, saying “the Deliverance struggles to do anything new with horror’s most familiar subgenre. Anyone playing demonic bingo will fill their card quickly.”

Screen Rant gave a more favourable 3/5, but again highlights the horror side doesn’t quite work here.

It “pairs the possession with a very personal and well-developed family story,” says Screen Rant. “The latter is so good and intriguing that, when the demonic possession begins to overshadow it, I found myself frustrated with the supernatural elements of the film.”

The Guardian echoes similar sentiments in its 2/5 review. It says that while the cast is sound, The Deliverance “just turns into a big, standard-issue derivative sub-Exorcist slice of ridiculous nonsense in which, like so many real-life exorcism films (for example, The Conjuring 2, about the Enfield poltergeist case), nobody involved has apparently seen the film The Exorcist.”

One of the most positive reviews comes from the Chicago Sun-Times, a 3/4 rating. But it too highlights the derivative feel of The Deliverance, calling it an “effectively chilling albeit somewhat formulaic horror story.

So are you already ground down by the many familiar demonic possession horror flicks? If not, you may feel more warmly about The Deliverance.

It’s a sub-2-hour (112 min) watch, if that will sway your decision. The Deliverance is available to stream on Netflix just about everywhere, now.

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