Lee Daniels’ “The Deliverance” is lumbering and lurid long before it shows its African American-styled exorcism hand and turns ludicrous.

It’s a sordid wallow in working poor Black poverty, and the presence of Glenn Close as the white matriarch of this struggling family invites comparison to Netflix’s “Hillbilly Elegy.” If anything, this is even more embarassing for her than that J.D. Vance-written abortion.

I could have gone my whole life without hearing the Always Oscar’s Bridesmaid Close appropriate an affected, half-drawled oversexed and way-over-60 white-woman-in-Black-culture accent, playing the abusive mother of an abusive alcoholic (Andra Day).

“Girl, I’m just tryin’ to get you t’live a clean life.“

“The Deliverance” never shakes that cringy “Hood-billy Elegy” mantle, even as it descends into something that merits its “horror” film label.

Day, last seen in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” is Ebony, struggling to house and feed and clothe two teens (played by Demi Singleton and Caleb McLaughlin) and a younger son, Dre (Anthony B. Jenkins) in 2011 Pittsburgh.

It’s worth avoiding the word “raise” in describing what she does for these children. Because while she might indulge her “Little Basquiat” in helping him paint a bedroom wall mural in their latest rental house, Ebony will never win mother of the year.

She’s a foul-mouthed, foul-tempered sometime drunk who took in her white mother Alberta (Close) to help them cover expenses. A social worker, played by Mo’Nique, who won an Oscar for Daniels’ “Precious,” is “on my ass” because Ebony & Fam are constantly on the move as she tries to keep her distance from “the system.”

But her kids get bruised. A lot. It’s just that in this new house, it may not be Ebony doing all the bruising.

She sees her littlest boy exhibit simptoms of trances, as if he’s possessed. She experiences a bit of this demonic possession herself. And then all three kids have meltdowns at school.

The medical profession is baffled. But maybe mother ‘Berta’s “apostle” preacher (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), who reaches out and explains the concept of “deliverance” in “It’s NOT an exorcism” (actually, it is) terms.

Day is a solid presence at the heart of the story, and the kids aren’t bad. Mo’Nique is the stand-out supporting player, but Close manages something she’s never come close to in her long career. She embarasses herself.

Daniels, who co-wrote this “inspired by true events” script, tries to one-up “The Exorcist” in at least one regard — profanity. He lays it on thick in dialogue laced with f-bombs and worse (when the “exorcism” begins).

“Clean up your f—–g mouth, Shante,” Day’s Ebony shrieks at one cussing kid.

Daniels has made a couple of half-decent dramas (“The Butler,” “The United States vs. Billie Holiday”) since his “Precious” breakthrough. But he’s always a filmmaker who tends towards the tawdry, the overwrought and the soapy, and when he goes wrong — “Shadowboxer,” “The Paperboy” — his pictures tumble into tacky, cliche ridden camp.

“The Deliverance” has plenty of examples of those excesses, as well as evidence that Daniels is lost in this genre. A horror movie with a message about Black poverty and parenting might seem ambitious, and he makes sure to be inclusive, including a transgender character, throwing in a swipe about white women who prefer Black men (and Black women’s loathing of such women) and such.

But for a guy who jumped straight into putting his name before the title of his films, Lee Daniels is still too ham-fisted and clumsy to make these down-market melodramas come off.

And he’s got no clue about building suspense and delivering shocks.

If Lee Daniels is not as embarassed as Glenn Close probably is by this, he ought to be.

Rating: R, violence, alcohol abuse, graphic scatological content, constant profanity

Cast: Andra Day, Glenn Close, Anthony B. Jenkins, Caleb McLaughlin, Omar Epps, Demi Singleton, Lawrence Washington, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Mo’Nique.

Credits: Directed by Lee Daniels, scripted by David Coggeshall, Elijah Bynum and Lee Daniels. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:53