THE DELIVERANCE

(CCC, BBB, OO, LLL, VVV, S, AA, M):

Movie has a clear Christian perspective on the supernatural where demons are real, and God is real, and Jesus is real, but it takes a long time to reach this expression of faith, and so the movie can feel confusing to a Christian audience, the movie stresses the need everyone has for salvation from Jesus, a character performing an exorcism or “deliverance” says, “If you act in the power and the authority of Jesus Christ, you can touch a body and the demon will run,” but the first part of the movie focuses on the power of the Devil and demons and showcases this power as a power to be feared, which some may view as contrary to the belief that we should first and foremost fear God, the movie’s expression of the demonic may be disturbing to some, and a side Christian character fails because she doubts herself;

At least 105 obscenities (including at least 60 “f’ words), one strong profanity using the name of Jesus, four GD profanities, three light profanities, seven “n” words, mother wears a shirt with an obscenity on it, and one of the lead Christian characters uses foul language multiple times, which is a very confusing portrayal;

Extreme, strong and light scary violence includes mother backhands child on his mouth harder than she wanted, and it causes his mouth to bleed instantly, mother hits son, and, in return, son shoves mother to the floor, a dead cat is found in a home basement, a crow hits a window and dies, son slips on baseball bat, and a toaster falls on him in the process, daughter notices bruises on her arm, and it’s implied the mother may have been abusive to her, but she says, “it was there when I woke up,” boy is found banging his head on the door of the basement and is trapped in a trance (boy says he was talking with his imaginary friend who lives in a hole inside the basement, a demonic presence seems to be harming children and making it appear as if the mother has been abusing them, the three children have an implied encounter with the demon one night, and the next day at school they are behaving very strangely, one of the children throws his own feces at his teacher, the daughter has a period during music recital and stands there as if nothing has happened, the second boy laughs at hearing of the death of the teacher’s brother by AIDS, possessed son tries to drown the other son in the bathtub and snaps out of it because his mother stops him, it’s implied the son has been hiding in the closet talking in an unknown language to someone who tells him he should kill himself, mother talks about a car hitting her young son, there’s a very violent scene where a possessed wife decapitates her husband with an axe (the moment of impact is offscreen, however), the aftermath of the decapitation is shown moments later, a character talks about a possessed mother who strangled her daughter and then hung herself, a woman is attacked by some kind of dark spirit of a child (the spirit is difficult to see), there is a scene where the mother comes home, and the wooden cross on the wall is burning, a boy is seen frothing at the mouth in some kind of seizure of possession, a possessed boy says, “God is dead” and then somehow escapes his restraints and jumps onto the wall, during the exorcism of a possessed boy holy water is sprinkled onto him, and this creates smoke, boy transforms into the form of his grandmother who now has black eyes and sharp teeth, woman is lifted by the throat by an unclean spirit, and then hurled against a wall, woman is then dragged by her hair and thrown into another wall and levitates, a boy begins to vomit and tear his shirt open as he becomes possessed, boy grows claws and begins to tear at his own chest, girl in a bed begins to become possessed and bleeds from her eyes, possessed boy has an unnaturally long tongue, boy attacks his mother and transforms into the image of her, mother begins to become possessed, mother’s body begins to crack into unnatural positions, and she hammers her face against the floor, demons begin to smoke after being rebuked, mother’s possessed children are shown levitating with holes in their hands, and one of them is eating his own arm;

Some suggestive lewd language, mother gets drunk and dances suggestively with men at a party, an older Christian woman flirts with multiple men and tries to dress in an alluring way, and minor character is a transsexual who appears to be growing breasts (shown briefly);

No nudity;

Mother character has an alcohol problem, which is mostly in her past, but at one point in the movie she begins to drink again at a party and becomes drunk;

No smoking or drugs; and,

Mother makes racist comment to an Asian man and says, “Now go home and fry that [stuff] up with some soy sauce,” and during the scene of a character choosing to come to God with her problems, where she prays the prayer of faith, the music is incredibly ominous, which makes it feel like there is something unsettling about her conversion, rather than cathartic or positive (it’s a strange directing choice, but it’s ultimately clarified positively by the movie’s ending).