‘The Deliverance’ ending explained: Andra Day breaks down the real-life horror

Warning: This post contains spoilers for "The Deliverance."

Evil supernatural spirits are just one-half of the horrors the Jackson family has to deal with in Lee Daniels’ Netflix thriller “The Deliverance.”

The other half consists of the deep-rooted familial traumas plaguing every member of the household, which is led by Ebony, a struggling single mother played by singer-songwriter Andra Day.

Ebony and her three children have just moved into their first home in Gary, Indiana when pesky files around the house lead her to discover that demonic spirits dwell in her basement, haunting and altering her family’s lives forever.

But before those horrors are unmasked, the biggest battles the family faces are with each other. Ebony, who recently separated from her children's father, enlists the help of her mother, Alberta (Glenn Close), to help ease the transition. But their relationship is strained, and Ebony, who struggles with alcohol abuse, is short-tempered, often taking out her frustrations on her children.

Speaking to TODAY.com on the portrayal of her character, Day says Ebony's life is complex as she grapples with not only supporting her kids as single mom, but dealing with her own personal demons.

“I think she is a very traumatized single mother that is doing the best she can do with what it is she has,” the film’s star said. “She’s trying as much as she can to not raise her kids in the same environment that her mother raised her in, and she’s trying to be a better mother to her kids than what she received from her mother, Alberta.”

Day noted that Ebony is inadvertently repeating the cycle of abuse to her children because she never reckoned with her own trauma.

“Because she has not sought help, and because she hasn’t dealt with with the effects of her own personal abuse,” she says. “Because she hasn’t dealt with things she is unfortunately inflicting damage on her kid that she might not even be aware of.”

What happens in ‘The Deliverance’?Set in 2011 and loosely based on the real-life accounts of Latoya Ammons, the film starts with the Jackson family moving into a home in Gary, Indiana that they soon learn has a history of haunting its inhabitants. There, strange things start to occur, from an influx of flies around the house to strange noises at night.

Curious about the occurrences, Ebony’s youngest son Andre (Anthony B. Jenkins), is lured to the home's shadowy and fly-infested basement, where he says he talks to a friend, Trey, who lives there.

Despite her youngest son’s strange behavior, Ebony focuses on her immediate concerns: financing her mother’s cancer treatments and combatting an active Department of Child Services case against her.

Ebony’s mother, Alberta, is living with the family temporarily to help bear some of her daughter's load. She also helps to act as a buffer to the abuse the children face at the hands of their Ebony, who is quick to anger and hits her kids when she feels disrespected by them.

This history of abuse is why DCS social worker, Cynthia (Mo’Nique), establishes regular check-ins with the family.

Aside from her ongoing family issues, Ebony is struggling with her own personal demons. After a joyful night at a birthday party for her daughter Shante (Demi Singleton), Ebony’s alcoholic past reemerges when she drunkenly snaps at a family friend (Miss Lawrence), souring the mood of the evening.

“Her closet is full of trauma, it is full of pain and it’s full of abuse,” Day said about the skeletons in her character’s closet. “It’s full of abuse she has received and inflicted, and it’s also full of coping mechanisms.”

The rocky relationship between Ebony and Alberta is also on full display with the two frequently going head to head about the abuse Ebony faced as a child and the financial tolls of Alberta’s chemotherapy.

But the tense family drama is put on the back burner when supernatural occurrences take place in the home, making it impossible for Ebony to ignore.

After Ebony and Alberta walk into the bathroom to see the oldest son Nate (Caleb McLaughlin) seemingly possessed and attempting to drown Andre in the bathtub, they both realize something evil is taking over the family.

While Alberta scours nearby churches in hopes of finding a priest who'd be willing to perform an exorcism at their home, Ebony encounters Bernice James (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), a reverend who has a history of dealing with the hauntings in their house and helping a family who were once possessed by the demons that live there.

But their meeting turns out to be unfruitful; Ebony rejects Reverend James’ help and decides to go at it alone. She returns home only to find her living room filled with smoke and her mother’s lifeless body on the floor with red marks around her neck.

When her youngest son Andre comes downstairs emotionless to the scene in front of him, Ebony soon realizes that he is possessed with an evil spirit and is behind her mother's death.

Things continue in a downward spiral a few days later when Ebony and her children take a late-night drive. In the car, Shante reveals that she called Cynthia to help out after Alberta’s death and Ebony chastises her for it. Andre, who's been banging his head incessantly on his seat, suddenly snaps at Ebony, telling her it’s her fault her mother is dead before the whites of his eyes black out — an indication he's once again possessed by an evil being.

Frightened, Ebony nearly drives head-on into a semi-truck before stopping at a restaurant and asking for help. A good Samaritan checks in on the kids still in the car, with Andre seemingly back to normal.

After an evaluation at the hospital, the older kids are sent away to a church foster care while Andre is kept at the hospital for further observation. He is visited by Cynthia who sees him convulsing and frothing at the mouth. Her concern soon turns into terror when she witnesses the boy breaking his restraints and climbing up the walls.

Now realizing that his issues are bigger than just his mom's abuse, she appears to have a change of heart on the family's DCS case even though the doctor, who she tells about Andre's behavior, downplays it as nothing out of the ordinary.

Ebony, working to pick up the pieces on her now broken family, seeks out Rev. James in hopes of getting her children back.

How does 'The Deliverance' end?

After sneaking Andre out of his hospital room, Ebony and Rev. James tie the boy to a chair in the home’s living room to begin what James calls “the deliverance,” an exorcism-like ritual.

While pelting the boy with holy water, Andre turns into a ghoulish version of Alberta who spews insults at James and Ebony during the process.

The deliverance seems to be failing with a possessed Andre throwing around the reverend, fatally wounding her. Before she dies, James attributes her failure to her fear, giving Ebony the holy water and telling her not to doubt herself. She says the only way to successfully cast out the demon is by having “no fear.”

When Ebony goes to finish the deliverance in the basement, she is confronted by Andre who says he wants the spirit out of him. But when Ebony attempts to splash him with the holy water, he pounces on her, knocking it out of her hand. He eventually reemerges as a demon version of Ebony, fighting her and eventually using her own body against her.

As the demon has its foot pressed against her neck, Ebony is suddenly transported into a dream-like void, where she recalls happier memories of her son. She then snaps back into reality when she hears her mother’s voice saying, “I know you don’t want to talk to me, but you can talk to God.”

This gives Ebony the strength to confront the demon that has possessed her son. She rebukes it, speaks in tongues, and hurls Bible verses at it. This causes the demon to be engulfed in flames, exploding in a large fireball. When Ebony comes to, she finds Andre peacefully sleeping on the basement floor and returned to his normal self.

Andra Day had to reckon with her past during filming

Speaking with TODAY.com, the film’s star acknowledged the personal challenges that came up while playing her character, especially during the final deliverance scene.

“I think the difficulty of it and the fear for most of us on set was really just sort of our own kind of emotional trauma and those issues,” Day says. “It’s very crazy when you’re when you’re even imitating something on set and realizing how vulnerable you could be to these things.”

Like her character, she admits that some of those things were "unresolved."

“I really had to face a few other unresolved issues in my life that I thought I had resolved in order to play Ebony. And a lot of them came out in that scene,” she says.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com