The Deliverance

An exorcist story made by and for the Black community, this uneven supernatural horror flick is based on a 2011 haunting in Gary, Ind.

I’d never really noticed it before, but movies about exorcism tend to be pretty lily-white, without a lot of Black and brown folks in the mix. It’s historically been Catholic priests, WASP-y families and upper-middle-class suburbs.

“The Deliverance,” the new supernatural horror flick from acclaimed director Lee Daniels (“Precious”), is very much made by and for the Black community. All the characters — except one, notably — are Black, the setting is a rough urban neighborhood, and the family is challenged economically as well as by a history of domestic violence.

Heck, they even proactively eschew the term “exorcism,” something decidedly of Roman origin, preferring the term used in the title. And no black-frocked male priests here as the religious backdrop, though unspecified, appears to be Baptist and women-led.

Written by David Coggeshall and Elijah Bynum, “The Deliverance” is based on a reported 2011 demonic possession that took place in Gary, Ind., in what’s come to be known as the Ammons Haunting. A single mother, her three children and their grandmother reported disturbing, unexplained events, including all three kids taking turns under the demons’ sway.

(As seems to be custom, Pittsburgh substitutes as the shooting location stand-in for Indiana.)

It’s a Netflix production, but will have a theatrical run starting Aug. 16 before debuting on the streaming platform two weeks later.

It’s in some ways two movies in one. The last third really gets into the typical scary exorcism stuff — blacked-out eyes, crawling up walls, burning crucifixes, and all that. The bulk of the story centers on the family’s complicated history of abuse and neglect.

The result is a film that’s a slow burn, taking its time when it should quicken the pace and then blasting through the payoff portion without giving it air to breathe. It’s still genuinely frightening at times, though the acting gets a bit hammy now and then.

Like a lot of movies these days, it could have used a trim from its 112-minute running time.

Andra Day — so, so good in the under-appreciated “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” — plays Ebony, a youngish woman with a dark past, including prison time and bouts with the state Department of Children’s Services (DCS). As the story opens, they have just moved into a new rental house on the wrong side of town, their third place in the past year. Her car is about to get repossessed, and her work as a hairdresser barely pays the bills.

She has three children: Nate (Caleb McLaughlin), about 14 or 15, Shante (Demi Singleton), a year or two younger, and Andre (Anthony B. Jenkins), around 10. All three kids live in fear of their mom, who’s prone to fits of anger and drunkenness. Early on we see Ebony give the back of her hand to Dre, a shy and sweet kid, drawing blood.

It’s clear from everybody’s reaction this is not a new occurrence.

Also a member of the household is Andra’s mother, Alberta, played by none other than Glenn Close, who of course is not Black. She’s an aggressive silver fox type who likes to flirt with seemingly every man she sees, wears age-inappropriate outfits and is always done up in heavy, cheap-looking makeup and wigs.

Alberta attends a Black church and seems very much to consider herself part of the community, even adopting language and attitudes normally associated with the sort of saucy older women of color you often see in movies like this.

It’s also evident that the way Ebony treats her children tracks with how Alberta raised her — a veneer of maternal concern barely hiding a lot of self-centered and destructive behavior. Ebony hates her mom, but even moreso hates that she is a reflection of her.

Almost immediately upon entering the new house, strange things occur. Swarms of black flies arise from seemingly nowhere. Birds fly into windows. People hear voices when nobody appears to be there. Dre develops an imaginary friend named Trey who he says lives in a hole in the basement, but sometimes his closet.

More disturbingly, the children go into trance-like states where they act out in defiance of Ebony in a way they’d never do on their own. These events get progressively worse and even become deadly.

About halfway through the movie, Ebony’s DCS case manager, Cynthia, shows up on her doorstep, played by Mo'Nique. Cynthia seems to view Ebony as more of her vassal than her client, dropping threats about having the children put back into state custody. She also wears incongruously expensive clothes and shoes for a social services employee, even driving a Mercedes.

I think it’s supposed to be a fun, wry walk-on part for Mo’Nique, who as you may know has had a rather contentious relationship with Hollywood since winning an Oscar for “Precious.” Honestly, as written it feels an unnecessary role, like Daniels throwing a bone to his old colleague.

Better is Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor — another Oscar nominee for “King Richard” — as Bernice, a mysterious figure who seems to show up around the same times Cynthia does, also driving a Mercedes. I’ll leave you to discover on your own the part Bernice has to play, but she gets some meaty scenes during the fire-and-brimstone portions of the movie.

Also turning up is Omar Epps as a love interest for Alberta, and I’ll confess I did not even recognize a guy who was once one of the hottest young actors in movies.

The best thing about “The Deliverance” is the deliberately ambivalent way the filmmakers and Day work to make us feel about Ebony. She’s a deeply screwed up person and terrible mother, and yet we feel some level of empathy for her plight — especially the ferocity with which she reacts to the threats to her children. It’s really an antihero role, someone bad who wants to be good, or at least better, and that makes her a compelling figure.

The scary stuff at the end works, even if it’s overly familiar, and the ongoing rivalry between Ebony and Alberta carries us well enough until that part arrives. This movie is kind of cheap and tawdry fare, but with standout thespians who lend some heft to the boo-gotcha material.