Netflix movies are notoriously hit or miss, and that’s being generous. The vast majority of them come and go without much buzz or fanfare (if any!), so I don’t usually pay much attention to them. But the new exorcism film The Deliverance is one of the few exceptions. Before it came out, I heard that the lead star went off-script by literally speaking in tongues in one scene, and the director had an apostle pray on set every day.

And since I’m a Christian, that really intrigued me. Granted, I had no illusions that these unorthodox methods would automatically make the movie better, and to be honest, I’m still not 100% sure what an “apostle” is supposed to be (after all, Jesus’ Apostles died about 2,000 years ago). But they were enough to catch my eye, so I figured I’d check this film out and see if it could add anything new to the time-honored possession subgenre.

The Deliverance was directed by Lee Daniels, and it stars Andra Day, Caleb McLaughlin, Anthony B. Jenkins, Demi Singleton, Mo’Nique, Glenn Close, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. The movie follows a family of five–Ebony, her mother Alberta, and her kids Nate, Shante, and Andre–who lead a very hard life. Ebony is an alcoholic who can’t seem to keep it together, Alberta is undergoing chemotherapy, and the kids don’t get much guidance from either of them.

It’s just a rough situation all around, and to make things worse, these characters soon start to experience some very odd phenomena. At first, the disturbances focus on Andre, the youngest child, but they soon begin to affect the other two as well. Unsurprisingly, the kids eventually undergo a battery of medical tests, and when the doctors can’t find anything wrong with them, Ebony turns to the church for help.

On paper, that might sound like a fairly standard exorcism template, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But what that plot synopsis doesn’t tell you is that The Deliverance features some of the best acting you’ll see in this entire subgenre. Seriously, everybody in the film is fantastic, so you almost feel like you’re right there with this family, going through the same hardships they experience day in and day out.

In particular, I have to give special mention to Andra Day. She plays Ebony, and she gives a genuinely Oscar-worthy performance. On the surface, you might think her character is just a stereotypical angry Black woman, but Day makes her so much more than that bland cliche. Ebony had a traumatic childhood herself, and you can tell that she carries those wounds with her every day of her life. She looks, acts, and talks like she’s been so beaten down by life that she simply doesn’t know how to rise above the horrible example her own mother gave her, so no matter how bad she may be, you can’t help but sympathize with this woman’s struggles.

Then, when the horror kicks into gear, Day gets even better. She just about runs the entire emotional gamut, from utter terror and despondency to peaceful jubilation, and she nails every single beat she’s asked to hit. She’s truly the heart and soul of The Deliverance, and along with the rest of this stellar cast, she kept my eyes glued to the screen way past the movie’s expiration date.

See, while the lead performance kicks it up a notch when the demon comes to the fore, the scares themselves are a completely different story. They’re all super generic, and as the film goes on, they simply get worse and worse. At first, these frights are decent enough that the amazing characters can still keep the story afloat, but when we reach the third act, they just become too much to bear.

To be fair, director Lee Daniels does try to differentiate The Deliverance from most other exorcism movies. Most notably, his “exorcist” isn’t a Catholic priest. Rather, it’s a female apostle (again, I’m still not entirely sure what this title means, but that’s how the character describes herself), and there’s even a scene where she eschews the word “exorcism” and describes her work as “deliverance” instead.

But despite those unique trappings, the execution is still rife with genre cliches. The apostle’s deliverance looks and sounds a whole lot like a typical Hollywood exorcism, and the demon’s antics are all super familiar. It makes the kids levitate, it takes on the appearance of other people, and it gives Andre a very standard demonic look, so this is pretty much the same third act we’ve seen in almost every possession movie ever made.

All that being said, there is one way The Deliverance successfully sets itself apart from most other horror films: it takes a positive view of Christianity. In fact, you could even call it a borderline Christian movie, just with a lot more demons and F-bombs. And in a world where a lot of recent exorcism films, like The Exorcist: Believer and The Exorcism, seem to be neutral at best on this question, I found it refreshing to see a film like this actually embrace the faith it depicts.

Unfortunately, though, that’s not nearly enough to save the movie. Sure, The Deliverance starts off great, but by the time the credits begin to roll, the film loses all the goodwill its opening act worked so hard to earn. It ends up wasting one of the best performances I’ve seen all year, so if you’re looking for some good new horror to watch, I suggest you look elsewhere.