Leviticus Review: Accomplished Aussie Horror Feature Blends Paranoia and Love

Being queer—especially in this rapidly regressive age—means becoming acquainted with a base level of fear for most of your life. It is something you learn early on: not only when you must discover who can be trusted with your survival, but whether they might betray that trust later. Violence takes so many forms that it can lead to a sort of paranoia that folds in on itself. Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus understands this intimately. By blending the mechanics of It Follows with the trauma of conversion therapy, he crafts a tense, thematically potent feature debut that is more than just a clear metaphor—this is a creepy horror picture in its own right.

The scares start early. Leviticus opens in a brightly lit pool as a teenage girl is drawn to a shower that has mysteriously turned on. She seems to recognize someone in the room just before meeting an untimely fate. Chiarella then introduces our protagonists: Naim (Joe Bird, from the Aussie horror hit Talk To Me) and Ryan (Stacey Clausen), first seen hanging out and throwing rocks at each other before sharing a kiss. Both seem to have accepted their identities, but given the small Australian town they live in, there is an unspoken understanding that it must be kept secret.

More pressing is the conservative Evangelical church they both attend; in fact, Naim’s recently widowed mother, Arlene (Mia Wasikowska), moved there specifically to join the congregation. It’s a situation typical of the trials faced by gay youths, necessitating sidelong glances in class and coded language around families. This pressure feeds the jealousy spiked in Naim after he witnesses Ryan not only kissing the pastor’s son, Hunter (Jeremy Blewitt), but throwing rocks with him as well.

Naim’s disastrous choice to report the encounter results in Ryan and Hunter being brought before a “deliverance healer.” Whether it’s a ritual or a ceremony, the process looks more like a painful exorcism: the healer flicks a lighter and the two boys begin convulsing and foaming at the mouth. Naim soon undergoes the ritual in an absolutely heartbreaking, stomach-churning scene that leaves him pleading with his mother, and the film’s conceit is revealed: an entity now stalks the victim. It is capable of looking exactly like the person you love most, always watching and following, luring you into a false sense of security before bloodily dispatching you.

Chiarella has a skill for creating scares beyond the obvious, but Leviticus (which takes its name from the biblical verse often used against homosexuality) gains a massive jolt from a near-perfect melding of theme and concept. The goal of conversion therapy is not to actually “turn” someone straight—this is impossible—but force them to associate their very identity with terror. As Ryan puts it: “They want us to be scared of each other.”

That simple fact lends a devastating undertone to the horror. It’s one thing to see Ryan screaming as he bursts out of a bathroom; it’s another to realize his ear—the very spot Naim had tenderly kissed in a rare moment of solace on a bus—has been horribly mangled. The horror comes not just from the monster, but the idea that the things you love most about a person will be used against you until you either destroy each other or yourself.

None of this would be nearly as effective without Bird and Clausen’s easy chemistry. They also shine when separated, communicating volumes through their eyes or a simple sigh. Perhaps most surprising is the way Wasikowska avoids the obvious path of a “homophobic mother” trope. She instead portrays Arlene as loving but cold, her inability to accept her son’s sexuality leading her to an unforgivable decision. In a way, it feels truer to life: parents often make choices out of a misguided sense of love that nonetheless damage their children in ways neither can entirely foresee.

Leviticus finally reveals a sweet, hard-won love story. It explores how homophobia warps not just one’s own perceptions, but the way people are remembered after they die, creating a cycle of grief and violence (represented here by a retaliation from Hunter’s sister, Izzy). Chiarella displays a bit of first-time stumbling—the film isn’t quite an equal two-hander between the boys, leading to a climax that lacks the necessary impact—and while it clocks in at a welcome 88 minutes, there would be no harm in some slight fleshing-out of the narrative.

Yet Chiarella absolutely nails the final scene, taking Leviticus beyond its inspirations and into something almost hopeful. The fear is real, and it may never fully go away, but we’ve come too far to go back into the closet. In a time where outsiders try to fracture the queer community to drive isolation, Leviticus suggests that the most powerful form of resistance is simply staying together through it all.

Leviticus opens in theaters on Friday, June 19.