“The Deliverance,” on Netflix Friday, tells of demonic possession inspired by “true events.”

Director Lee Daniels (“Precious”) issued a statement saying, “I no longer look at this as a typical horror movie. Instead, it’s a call for a higher power. Rather than making you jump out of your seat every two seconds, I’m here to scare you into finding your faith.

“This is about a family struggling with demons both literally and figuratively. My hope is that audiences are jolted into finding their higher power and while they’re at it — enjoying the wild ride into hell and back that is ‘The Deliverance.’”

Andra Day was known as a singer until Daniels cast her in her first film and she became an Oscar nominated Best Actress for Daniels’ “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.”

Reunited with her director, Day, 39, is Ebony Jackson, whose husband is in Iraq – it’s 2011 – and who has moved into a new house where her children become endangered and possessed.

“Where do I begin with Ebony?” Day began. “First, I begin with prayer. But also with intention, because that’s how Lee does his movies.

“What’s the goal here? What do we want people to learn from Ebony? How do we want them to empathize with her?

“That’s the first thing: you empathize with her character. You understand that this is a woman, a Black woman, that is in a cycle of abuse. Her mother was abused. Her mother was abusive to her.  She’s trying to be the best mother she can be to these kids. But because of all this unhealed trauma, she is inflicting damage on her kids.

“It was important for Lee that she developed her own spiritual relationship with Christ — I think that’s part of the reason he cast me. I am a believer.”

Ebony, Day continued, “is a full meal. She has a lot of defensiveness, which seems to be earned, about the way people make assumptions about her and judge her and don’t believe her.”

The film’s attack on demonic possession is, as the title says, a deliverance. How is that different from an exorcism?

“I don’t know too much about that,” Day allowed in a Zoom interview. “We had a man named Apostle Lewis on set who was amazing, who has actually performed many deliverances.

“From what I’ve gleaned — I could be wrong — the difference is, it’s less about just exorcising a demon from someone. It’s more about the whole deliverance of the person.

“Not just getting rid of the demon, but actually ushering them into a relationship with God. Or with Christ. It’s a whole transformation thing.”

“The Deliverance” streams on Netflix Aug. 30