Challenges to established theory and method proposed withinrecent debates about spirits andspirit possession trancehave led scholars to explore new links between ethnographic data andbroader questions in the academic study of religion. Although studies such as Keller’s encourage important advances in the study of possession and related phenomena, her analysis of contemporary western views of possession is largely focused on academic works that tend to treat itas a phenomenon associated with ‘the other’, whether that be situated historically or geographically.There remains, nonetheless, an area of enquiry that has not yet been fully opened up and this concerns ideas about possession in the popular imagination of people who are unfamiliar with religious traditions that engage with possession trance. This paper aims to explore some of these ideas through an analysis of spirit possession in contemporary cinema, and suggests continuities and differences in themes between this medium and ethnographic studies.
