What You Need to Know about Shamanism – Introduction
Ed. Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on the resurgence of Shamanism and what it is.
Picture the scene: it’s a Saturday afternoon, and your child or grandchild is on the couch, completely absorbed. On the screen, three stylish young women in sharp suits are fighting villains with glowing swords. The music is infectious. The spirit animals are adorable. You catch a few minutes of it, think this seems fine, and go back to whatever you were doing. Millions of families had that exact afternoon last year.
It is easy to see why KPop Demon Hunters has captivated so many. The film is funny, fast, emotionally direct, and visually irresistible. Its songs are catchy. Its world is imaginative. Its themes—friendship, shame, belonging, authenticity, sacrifice—are deeply felt. For many parents and grandparents, that is exactly what makes it difficult to evaluate. The problem is not that the film feels obviously dark at every moment. In fact, it often feels moving, admirable, and even hopeful. The problem is how its emotionally resonant themes make its spiritual framework and solutions seem palatable to so many, even when they are directly rooted in the occult practice of shamanism. This is why discernment is so needed.
An Inescapable Phenomenon
The movie KPop Demon Hunters has been viewed over 500 million times, making it the most-watched original title in Netflix history.[1] It went on to win Oscars for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song at the Academy Awards,[2] and secured KPop’s first-ever Grammy Award.[3] TIME Magazine named it its “2025 Breakthrough of the Year.”[4] The movie has been especially popular among younger children with one report finding that 48 percent of its viewers were between ages two and eleven.[5]
And even if they don’t see it on the screen, kids are likely to come across it in one way or another. Its songs are everywhere, at one time holding four of Billboard’s top ten songs.[6] Its characters appear in toys such as American Girl dolls, Fisher-Price Little People Collector sets, and Polly Pocket keychain sets.[7] The film is also being incorporated into classroom curriculum for students from grade school through high school.[8]
This is not a passing curiosity. It is not something parents can simply ignore. It is one of the stories helping shape how many children imagine power, evil, healing, identity, and the supernatural.
Why this film deserves a closer look
Christians do not need to panic over every popular movie. But neither should we shrug when a cultural phenomenon presents a spiritual vision that is both beautiful and misleading. KPop Demon Hunters is worth a closer look because its creators did not hide the sources they were drawing from. Co-director Maggie Kang has been explicit in interviews: “With the mythology, we wanted to root it in something that existed in Korean culture already. What it is, is Korean Shamanism.”[9] That matters, because the movie does not merely borrow a few exotic symbols or bits of folklore for atmosphere. It builds an entire imaginative universe around song, spiritual mediation, ritualized power, and protection from unseen forces.
In the film, music is not just self-expression. It is a force that moves spiritual reality. Performance is not just performance. It creates protection, channels power, and binds communities together. The heroines are effectively presented as spiritual mediators, and their performances function less like ordinary concerts than like ritual acts. Spirit beings are not simply enemies to resist; the spirit realm is also presented as a source of empowerment and insight. And healing comes not through repentance, forgiveness, or rescue from evil, but through embracing what has been hidden and learning to live in harmony with it.
That is why the movie deserves more than a quick thumbs-up or thumbs-down. It is telling a story about the human heart, but it is answering that story with a theology that is not Christian.
What the film understands
Part of the film’s strength is that it recognizes real problems. It knows that shame is powerful. It knows that people hide parts of themselves out of fear that they will not be loved if they are fully known. It knows that beauty and charisma can become tools of manipulation. It knows that crowds can be swept into forms of devotion that consume rather than give life. It even understands, at some level, that worship changes people. Strikingly, the film’s songwriter, EJAE, intentionally drew from Christian hymn structures to compose the demonic harvest anthem “Your Idol” as a way to express a very true theological reality: false idols often repurpose that which is designed to direct worship toward God in order to collect it for themselves.[10]
That is why so many viewers have connected with it. The movie touches authentic longings: to be seen, to be loved, to belong, to be free from crushing secrecy, to find a community that does not discard us. Those are not false longings. They are human longings, and in the Christian story they make sense because we were created for communion with God and one another.
What the film gets wrong
Where the film goes wrong is in the salvation it offers. KPop Demon Hunters suggests that our deepest problem is hiddenness and that our deepest need is integration. The way forward, then, is not deliverance from evil but acceptance of the darkness within. Its heroes do not finally escape a spiritual economy of ritual, energy, and mediated power; they simply learn to work within it more truthfully.
That is a profound difference from the gospel. Scripture does not teach that healing comes by making peace with evil or by discovering a stronger, more authentic way to wield spiritual power. Scripture teaches that sin and evil must be brought into the light, judged, forgiven, and overcome through the saving work of Christ. The gospel does not tell us to build a better shield around ourselves. It tells us that God Himself is our refuge. It does not offer spiritual technique. It offers a Savior.
This is where the contrast becomes especially important for children and teenagers. The movie presents a world in which the right song, the right performance, the right emotional honesty, and the right communal energy can produce protection and transcendence. It is a deeply compelling vision because it feels empowering. But it quietly shifts trust away from the living God and toward an enchanted system of power that can be managed, harnessed, and directed.
A better word than fear
That does not mean Christian parents should answer the film with alarmism. Fear by itself is not discipleship. Children usually know when adults are simply panicking, and panic rarely produces wisdom. The better response is calm, serious, gospel-shaped conversation. We can acknowledge what is skillful and emotionally perceptive in the movie. We can admit why people find it beautiful. And then we can patiently ask what vision of the world the film is inviting us to accept.
What kind of power does this story celebrate? What does it say is wrong with us? What does it say can heal us? What role do spirits play in this world? Why is music so central? Where is God in this account of good and evil? These are simply the kinds of questions Christians should ask whenever a story offers a map of reality.
Why this series exists
The articles that follow are meant to help with exactly that work. They do not exist to turn every movie night into a crisis, nor do they assume that every viewer is consciously embracing shamanism because they enjoyed an animated musical. Rather, they are designed to explain the worldview behind the imagery: what shamanism is, how it understands trance, spirit contact, ritual power, and healing, why Scripture warns against these practices, and how similar ideas can reappear in modern and even respectable-looking settings.
That matters because the issue is bigger than one film. KPop Demon Hunters has simply given many families a vivid, accessible point of contact with ideas that are older and deeper than they may realize. If the movie opens the door to a serious conversation, then Christians should be ready to walk through that door—not angrily, not anxiously, but with clarity.
And clarity should lead us somewhere better than mere warning. The Christian answer to shamanism is not just, “Do not go there.” It is also, and more importantly, “Look at Christ.” He does not ask us to harmonize with darkness but to come into the light. He does not ask us to conjure protection through ritual and collective energy but to trust the Father who keeps His people. He does not offer spirits as tools for human empowerment but gives Himself, the Holy Spirit, as His own gracious gift. He does not leave us to manage our shame through self-acceptance alone; He bears our shame, forgives our sin, and makes us new.
That is the spirit in which this series should be read. We want to understand shamanism soberly. We want to recognize why its promises are spiritually dangerous. But above all, we want to help parents, grandparents, pastors, and ordinary readers speak about these things with growing confidence that the gospel is not merely safer than the alternatives. It is better—more satisfying, more transformative, and more beautiful than any glittering counterfeit.
Endnotes