Missionaries encounter an ancient evil, that leaves them questioning their own faith and righteousness in the new horror/thriller, Shaman.
Shaman
Directed By: Antonio Negret
Written By: Daniel Negret
Starring: Sara Canning, Daniel Gillies, Jett Kyle, Humberto Morales
Release Date: August 8, 2025 (in limited theaters and VOD)
Set in a remote Ecuadorian village, Shaman puts the focus on a missionary family who work/serve within the indigenous community. With the assistance from an on-site minister (played by Alejandro Farjado), Candice and Joel (Sara Canning and Daniel Gillies) work hard to help the people around them. They teach classes, setup/maintain a church, help with water and food, and generally trying to improve the overall quality of life…you know, typical Western-world missionary stuff.
Their life is fairly simple, until their teenage son, Elliot (Jett Klyne) stumbles into a “forbidden” cave. Unwittingly, he manages to unleash a demon from the villagers’ ancient legends. When Elliot’s disturbing behavior begins to escalate and violence breaks out, Candice finds herself questioning the very people she’s there to help along with her faith.
This conflict, between her and the indigenous people she’s there to help, forms the crux of the movie, even beyond the possession aspect. In order to get her son the help he needs, she’ll have to come to terms with a culture and belief system outside of her own.
The result is a fairly straightforward possession movie. While it’s themes on faith and hypocrisy certainly gives you more to think about than expected, Shaman doesn’t go quite as far as it needs to.
There are some neat elements at play in the story, especially when it comes to the idea of exploring culturally specific demons. Coming to the understanding this demon is older than even Christianity itself, and thus follows different rules, steps up the struggle/tension in some fun ways. How it twists the idea of the indigenous people and their more “savage” beliefs into being the only way forward, is also refreshing (more on that in a bit).
The problem, is that’s about as deep as the film gets with anything. The film does little to actually explore those cultural aspects. Instead, it uses them as more than set dressing on top of familiar horror tropes. It’s criticisms on Christianity (namely the belief of being superior in faith and always in the right) are largely surface level without any real consequences to show a lesson learned.
So again, what we’re left with is a demon possession story that hits on pretty much all the same story beats to be expected.
To be entirely upfront with you, there’s one major reason I wanted to check out Shaman. As it takes place within an indigenous community, focuses on indigenous people and their spiritual aspects…I was concerned with how those things would come across. The trailer doesn’t do the movie many favors in this area either. It very obviously points to all the bad things that happen to their son on the titular ‘Shaman’ and what can be viewed as backwards ways.
Frankly, it looked every bit the stereotypical “natives are bad and heathens” kind of story, that could lean into the worst (and wrong) tropes. As an indigenous person myself, I admit my main curiosity was to see if the film was actually leaning into that angle or not. Thankfully, the movie isn’t racist like the trailer made it out to be, though perhaps using such marketing tactics is another conversation worth having…
Regardless, throughout its story, Shaman makes it clear Candice is in the wrong and prejudiced to the point of ignoring help until it’s too late. In many ways, she’s the true villain of the story. It’s a solid flip on the expectations, especially given how these kind of cultural entities have been treated in other films throughout the years. It’s refreshing to see it handled this way, which makes me wish the filmmakers had gone even further with it.
All in all, Shaman is simply fine. There’s nothing that stands out as particularly bad and the acting is solid throughout. It just needed more. More depth into the interesting premise it gives and more than the basic horror tropes, which offer some thrills but no surprises or genuine scares.
