The haunting true story behind Netflix's possession movie 'The Deliverance'

Lee Daniels’ favorite movie of all time is “The Exorcist,” but when it came to making his own possession film, his mother was a hard no.

The Oscar-nominated director wanted to tackle the haunting true story of Latoya Ammons, who claimed her children had been victimized by demons, after finishing his 2009 breakthrough “Precious.” “And my mom was like: ‘You bare your all and it's on screen. Spirits can jump on you, and I don't want you to do the film,’ ” Daniels tells USA TODAY. 

While he moved on to other projects, from “The Butler” to TVs “Empire,” Daniels never could shake Ammons’ stranger-than-fiction tale, which made believers out of skeptical witnesses in real life and inspired Daniels new movie “The Deliverance” (streaming now on Netflix).

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“I believe we are in a dark time,” Daniels says, and instead of a horror flick, he wanted to make a “faith-based thriller” to help audiences connect with a higher power. “Whether it's Buddha, whether it's Allah, whether it's Jesus Christ, whether it's you learning to love yourself more, we need to do that so that we can find peace. Tomorrow isn't promised for any of us.”

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Daniels breaks down the freaky facts from the fictionalized bits in “Deliverance,” which centers on a struggling Black mom wrestling with demons of the personal and also hellish kind.

‘The Deliverance,’ the case of Latoya Ammons both start with a fly infestation

Ammons’ ordeal began with black flies swarming their rental house, which gave way to inexplicable noises and appearances by a shadowy figure. And that’s how “The Deliverance" starts as well, with seemingly innocuous bugs and bad smells from the basement leading to much worse things. But Daniels spends a healthy amount of runtime investing in the dysfunctional dynamic between alcoholic Ebony (Andra Day) and her three children, plus Ebony’s ailing mother, Alberta (Glenn Close), before the spooky stuff sets in.

“That sort of was a problem for Netflix in the beginning, because they didn't understand it,” Daniels says. “They wanted more jump scares. I don't know how to make that kind of movie. It has to be grounded.” For him, more important was exploring "a bigger picture of what defines abuse, because (Ebony) definitely does hit her kids, and the dysfunction that goes on in this family, which was passed down.

“You think it's ‘Precious,’ but then it sort of makes a turn.”

Yes, a young boy crawled up a wall backward (seriously)

In “The Deliverance,” Ebony’s youngest son, Andre (Anthony B. Jenkins), shows signs of demon possession first, followed by older siblings Nate (Caleb McLaughlin) and Shante (Demi Singleton). Strange and violent incidents at school and home lead to them being hospitalized.

Harrowing film moments were based on actual reported occurrences, including one unnerving scene when Andre crawls up a hospital wall backward. In the movie, it’s witnessed by child services agent Cynthia (Mo’Nique) – in real life, Ammons’ mother saw her 7-year-old grandson do something unexplainable, as did a nurse and the family’s case manager. “Not only did they see it, but the social worker who was trying to take the kids from the mother said ‘This actually happened’ to the judge,” Daniels says. “You can't make it up.”

Children were taken from their mother in both real life and 'The Deliverance'

Child services investigated Ammons for possible child abuse or neglect, and while she was found to be of “sound mind,” the agency took custody of her children without a court order. "We'd already been through so much and fought so hard for our lives," she recalled to the Indianapolis Star in 2014. That same situation plays out to an emotional degree in “The Deliverance.”

“It happens,” says Daniels, who raised his brother's children, now 28, from when they were 3 days old. “There are so many children that are taken away from families and sometimes for good reason, sometimes not for good reason. And in this case it's not for good reason. She's fighting the system for her kids as she's fighting the demon that's in her house. And what a unique story to tell because it's real.”

Glenn Close was a departure from the actual grandmother

Making the movie, Daniels changed the names involved as well as the setting. Ammons’ “demon house” was in Gary, Indiana, while Ebony and her family live in Pittsburgh. The casting of Close as Alberta also deviated from reality: She has a history of friction with her daughter Ebony, found God and is trying to find some redemption later in life, but unlike Ammons’ mother, Alberta is white.

“I like giving voice to people that don't have a voice and a face to people don't really see often,” Daniels says. “There's so many white women that I knew growing up. I wanted to pay homage to (that). A lot of African Americans have never seen this character on screen before and will relate to her.”

The mom turned to deliverance ministers to win the day in both the movie and in life

Ebony ultimately gets a key assist from the Rev. Bernice James (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), a deliverance minister, a member of the clergy who cleanses a person or place of evil spirits, rather than an exorcist who focuses on demonic possession. The deliverer who worked with Ammons was a man, Daniels recalls, but “I desperately wanted to work with Aunjanue and I knew there were women doing this.” He says Ammons met with different types of “healers,” including a Catholic exorcist. (A scene with an exorcist didn’t make the final cut of the film.)

Daniels acknowledges he was initially skeptical of Ammons’ story until they spoke on the phone and he did his own research; plus, his mother told him about “something that she'd seen. This is stuff that happens and it's icky,” says the filmmaker, adding that he had a deliverer on set every day after reading articles and books about the weird goings-on during the making of “Poltergeist” and “The Exorcist.” “Not today, Satan!”