“Everyone is First to Die” by Lee Daniels on Netflix is based on a true story
“Everyone is first to die”: Lee Daniels meets “The Exorcist” in the Netflix film
Andra Day plays a single mother who is confronted with personal and downright hellish demons in Lee Daniels’ Netflix thriller “The First to Die.”
“The Exorcist” is Lee Daniels’ absolute favorite film, but when it came to making his own possession film, his mother was a clear no-no.
The Oscar-nominated director wanted to tackle the true story of Latoya Ammons, who claimed her children were haunted by demons, after he completed his breakout film “Precious” in 2009. “And my mom was like, ‘You show whatever you want and it’s going to be on the screen. Ghosts can attack you, and I don’t want you in the movie,'” Daniels tells USA TODAY.
Although he moved on to other projects, from The Butler to the television series Empire, Daniels could never shake Ammons’ incredibly strange story, which in real life turned skeptical witnesses into believers and inspired Daniels’ new film, The First Man (now streaming on Netflix).
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“I think we live in dark times,” says Daniels, and instead of a horror film, he wanted to make a “faith-based thriller” that would help audiences connect with a higher power. “Whether it’s Buddha, Allah, Jesus Christ, or whether it’s learning to love yourself more, we have to do that so we can find peace. Tomorrow is not promised to any of us.”
In “Everyone’s First to Die,” Daniels separates the spooky fact from the fiction, focusing on a black mother wrestling with demons both personal and hellish.
“The Deliverance” and the case of Latoya Ammons both begin with a fly infestation
Ammons’ ordeal began with a swarm of black flies in her apartment building, followed by unexplained noises and the appearance of a shadowy figure. And so, too, “The First to Die” begins, with seemingly harmless insects and foul smells from the basement that lead to something much worse. But Daniels spends a lot of time on the dysfunctional dynamic between alcoholic Ebony (Andra Day) and her three children, as well as Ebony’s ailing mother Alberta (Glenn Close), before the creepy stuff starts.
“That was a problem for Netflix at first because they didn’t understand it,” says Daniels. “They wanted more jump scares. I don’t know how to make a movie like that. It has to be grounded.” For him, it was more important to “develop a more comprehensive picture of what constitutes abuse, because (Ebony) definitely beats her children and the dysfunction that exists in that family and that has been passed down.”
“You think it’s called ‘Precious,’ but then it takes a turn.”
The Exorcism of Evil
Latoya Ammons and her family began to have more frequent experiences with demons. Blessings and exorcisms, more than one, finally brought peace.
Kelly Wilkinson, [email protected]
Yes, a little boy climbed a wall backwards (seriously)
In “Everyone’s First to Die,” Ebony’s youngest son Andre (Anthony B. Jenkins) is the first to show signs of demonic possession, followed by older siblings Nate (Caleb McLaughlin) and Shante (Demi Singleton). Strange and violent incidents at school and at home lead to them being hospitalized.
Harrowing moments in the film are based on actual accounts, including a disturbing scene in which Andre climbs backwards up a hospital wall. In the film, this is witnessed by child welfare officer Cynthia (Mo’Nique) – in real life, Ammons’ mother saw her 7-year-old grandson do something inexplicable, as did a nurse and the family’s case manager. “Not only did they see it, but the social worker who tried to take the children away from the mother told the judge, ‘This really happened,'” Daniels says. “You can’t make this stuff up.”
Both in real life and in “Everyone is First to Die,” children were separated from their mothers.
Child Protective Services investigated Ammons for possible child abuse or neglect, and although she was found to be “mentally sound,” the agency took custody of her children without a court order. “We had already been through so much and fought so hard for our lives,” she recalled to the Indianapolis Star in 2014. The same situation is emotionally portrayed in “Everyone’s First to Die.”
“It happens,” says Daniels, who has raised his brother’s children, now 28, since they were three days old. “There are so many children who are taken away from their families, sometimes for good reason, sometimes not. And in this case, it’s not a good reason. She’s fighting the system for her children, just like she’s fighting the demon that’s in her house. And what a unique story, because it’s true.”
Glenn Close was a departure from the actual grandmother
Daniels changed the names involved and the setting throughout the film. Ammons’ “demon house” was in Gary, Indiana, while Ebony and her family live in Pittsburgh. The casting of Close as Alberta also deviated from reality: She has had friction with her daughter Ebony in the past, found God, and is now trying to find redemption later in life, but unlike Ammons’ mother, Alberta is white.
“I like to give a voice to people who don’t have a voice and a face to people you don’t see very often,” says Daniels. “There are so many white women I knew growing up. I wanted to pay tribute to them. A lot of African-Americans have never seen this character on screen and will identify with her.”
The mother turned to deliverance preachers to achieve victory in both film and life
Ebony ultimately receives important assistance from the Reverend Bernice James (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), a deliverance minister, meaning a clergywoman who cleanses a person or place of evil spirits, rather than an exorcist who specializes in demonic possession. The deliverance artist who worked with Ammons was a man, Daniels recalls, but “I really wanted to work with Aunjanue and I knew there were women who did that too.” He says Ammons met with various kinds of “healers,” including a Catholic exorcist. (A scene involving an exorcist was not included in the final cut of the film.)
Daniels admits he was initially skeptical of Ammons’ story until they spoke on the phone and he did his own research, and his mother told him about “something she saw. It happens and it’s gross,” the filmmaker says, adding that he had a messenger on set every day after reading articles and books about the strange goings-on during the filming of “Poltergeist” and “The Exorcist.” “Not today, Satan!”
