Two alumni of The Vampire Diaries – Sara Canning and Daniel Gillies – reunite in Antonio Negret’s Shaman, which will be screening at Raindance Film Festival as part of its horror strand of programming. Set within an indigenous community in a remote Ecuadorian volcano, Shaman has Canning and Gillies play Candice and Sara, a missionary husband and wife looking to convert the natives to Christianity. Their work is going well, until their son Elliot (Jeff Klyne) wanders into a forbidden cave, awakening an ancient evil. Faced with true darkness, Candice must come to terms with her own faith in order to save Elliot from his possession.
Stories of possession are a dime a dozen, but Shaman does great work to set itself apart. Firstly, the location is far removed from stuffy churches, and rather than the traditional young girl getting possessed, it is a boy. Even our protagonist struggling with a crisis of faith is gender-swapped, the role typically being filled by a man rather than woman. All of these elements serve to give Shaman a different flavour to what audiences are used to and for the most part, it exceeds. One especially strong narrative component is the juxtaposition of opposing faiths and customs. Both the titular Shaman and Candice want Elliot to be well, but neither is fully prepared to accept the other’s belief system, something that will be vital if there is any chance to save him.
Sara Canning has been a staple of independent genre films for a number of years, and with Shaman she gets to utilise all the tricks of the trade that she has collected up to this point. Her performance as Candice is strong and naturalistic, Canning forgoing the expected hysterical woman tropes in favour of a fixated obsession with healing her child. Watching Candice’s journey of faith from pious at the start, to something completely different by the end, is fascinating to watch; Canning communicates Candice’s unravelling expertly. In the supporting role of husband Joel, Gillies is in far fewer scenes, but in those he is present for, he brings his A-game. Joel is a former addict, having been healed through faith and watching how the demonic force toys with his sobriety forms some of the cruellest moments in Shaman.
In terms of scare sequences, Shaman has plenty, though mainly rely on shadows and tension to trouble the viewer. When the more visual horror aspects are revealed, they are impressive; a nocturnal wander leads to a shower of dirt during one of the stronger scenes. But even before the possession, there is an eeriness to be found, and is witnessed most prominently during Elliot’s cave excursion. The landscape in Shaman is incredible, a refined mixture of beauty and danger encourages the viewer into a state of shock and awe before demons have even entered the fray. The cinematography captures all of this richness perfectly, before going on to distort the visuals into something truly evil.
As modern possession stories go, Shaman is one of the more original. There are no Priests clad in black, or ornate churches to lurk inside, and just these simple changes make Shaman a more inviting prospect. With so many films trying to mirror and replicate The Exorcist, it is always welcome to see a filmmaker approach a familiar subject matter from a fresh direction with a different lens. As such, Shaman is a film for those yearning for something new from their possession stories.
