Familiar Spirits

Recently in Mormons and Film class we watched Familiar Spirits, a modern Mormon horror film by Perry Shumway, which screened at the Mormon LDS Film Festival last year. Familiar Spirits begins with the protagonist, a teenaged girl named Angela, running through the forest at night time, being pursued by unseen beings. Barefoot and attired in a white party dress with a brilliant pink sash, Angela runs from the frightening noises around her until she comes upon a young woman who tells Angela to follow her. After they escape to a safer area, the young woman--who has long curly black hair, is wearing a dark blue velvet gown, and calls herself "Luci"--tells Angela that they are both spirits. Angela remembers back to a scene that took place earlier that evening--a scene where she is floating in the water, eyes closed with a large gash across her forehead, her mother lying unconscious inside a car floating nearby--and realizes she must have died in a car crash on the way home from attending a banquet with her mother that evening.

This film was in many is a typical horror film or ghost story. What makes it so unique and interesting is that from beginning to end it is infused with Mormon doctrine. We're not just talking about cultural or iconic Mormon elements. This is a film that was strongly Mormon. And yet, in a way it felt incongruous with Mormon doctrine because of its genre. In once scene you have a Mother explaining to her children the Plan of Salvation and in another scene, those same children are sitting behind a couch holding large knives, eyes wide, looking as eerie as children can be made to look on screen. They very much follow the pattern of unnaturally unemotional, almost robotic, children that seem to be a standard in horror films. Neither is particularly upset about the death of their older sister.

I'm interested specifically in what particular doctrines peculiar to Mormonism contributed to making this story possible. Here is a list I came up with:

1. There is a spirit world and it is on here on earth.
2. There was a pre-earth life where all of God's children lived together as spirits.
3. Evil spirits are the people who rebelled against God in the pre-earth life, meaning they forsook Christ's Plan of Salvation in favor of following Satan.
4. Evil spirits hate and envy mortals because they will never have bodies as a punishment for their having rebelled against God in the pre-earth life.
5. Evil spirits try to deceive us.
   
6. Some people have spiritual gifts that allows them to see spirits
7. If a spirit appears to you, you can tell whether it is good or evil by trying to shake its hand, according to D&C 129: 4, 7-8: "When a messenger comes saying he has a message from God, offer him your hand and request him to shake hands with you. Ask him to shake hands with you, but he will not move, because it is contrary to the order of heaven for a just man to deceive; but he will still deliver his message. If it be the devil as an angel of light, when you ask him to shake hands he will offer you his hand, and you will not feel anything; you may therefore detect him."
8. Because evil spirits were denied bodies, they may try to possess someone else's body. A spirit can not possess someone's body unless that person allows the spirit to possess his/her body.
9. Any man who has been ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood has the authority to cast out evil spirits.

Now that I look at it, that's quite a list. To me, a truly Mormon film is one that could not otherwise be made if the Mormon elements were taken out of it. There are a lot of films, such as Pride and Prejudice that wouldn't be fundamentally different films if the characters happened to not be Mormon because the Mormon elements are incidental to the plot. I would have to say that with Familiar Spirits, that's not the case. The Mormon doctrine is so central to the plot and so thoroughly woven in that the film would not be the same film if those were absent. I'm impressed that Perry Shumway took on such an ambitious project, and I would have to say that, assuming his goal was to make the first modern Mormon horror film, I think he succeeded.