Leviticus Review: Desire Becomes The Demon In Disturbing Horror Debut

The book from which Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus gets its title from is a not-so-subtle reference to what the first-time director is going for. There have been plenty of horror movies about conversion therapy, but none like this one. Though it is at times terrifying, capturing the isolation of the queer experience with bone-deep emotion, the first-time director’s new film is a surprisingly tender look at the shapes love and demons can take.

Talk to Me breakout Joe Bird stars as Naim, stuck in a dead-end Australian town, all smoke stacks and empty warehouses. Even the sun feels muted, casting a washed-out yellow light on its rundown suburban streets. Naim bikes around, wandering empty buildings, hitting snakes with sticks and breaking windows with stray rocks. He’s aimless, not happy to be there, dragged to the town by his zealous mother Arlene (Mia Wasikowska).

The only thing that seems to make him smile is Ryan (an arresting Stacy Clausen), a classmate who largely ignores Naim at school but steals kisses when no one is around. Naim and Ryan are drawn to each other, but adolescence inevitably leads to betrayal and when the religious sect in the town finds out about a forbidden romance, a Deliverance Healer is sent to curse them and a demon manifests in the form of the person they desire most.

Leviticus Transcends Its Horror Bonafides

Echoes of It Follows are prevalent, though sexual anxiety is replaced by repression and religious trauma, but, like that film, Leviticus is not just about that trauma. Chiarella, who also wrote the script, tells this not-quite-love-story with the confidence of a veteran, weaving a story of attraction into an unsettling story about community and the forces that try to destroy it.

Queer people have often been taught to be afraid of their desires, viewing their sexuality as a potential source of danger rather than something to be celebrated. Violence can linger on the edges of queer life, and it rears its ugly head in Leviticus, assault as much of a threat as the demon stalking Naim and Ryan.

Unsentimental in its brutality, Leviticus doesn’t shy away from bones crunching, spines bending, and blood gushing, as much a result of outside forces as the intense feelings that threaten to consume Ryan and Naim. It is these very forces that bring the pair together, though, and that’s where Leviticus finds an unexpected sentimentality that eschews abject horror for something more tender.

This wouldn’t be possible without the performances of Bird and Clausen. Naim is filled with curiosity and puppy love, shaky hands and hesitancy before fully giving in to his desire. Ryan hides a vulnerable side behind his bravado, using self-inflicted pain as a way to distract from his feelings, forcing one of his friends to throw rocks at his chest in an eerie display of self-flagellation. The chemistry when Naim and Ryan finally come together is electric, and there are plenty of scenes where they show why they fight so hard for each other.

Leviticus keeps us firmly planted in Naim’s point of view, which also allows Clausen to play the villain of sorts, embodying the demon called on by the Deliverance Healer with stoicism and aggression, flipping a switch in his performance that makes it easy to forget the gentle way his counterpart interacts with Naim.

Leviticus lands in a place that is both hopeful and laced with sadness, fitting for a movie about the kind of transformation its central characters go through. Often, “trauma horror” finds its characters overcoming the things that haunt them. Leviticus doesn’t let Naim and Ryan off that easy, though. What may appear to be a happy ending for some characters actually holds a much more melancholic heart, which makes what comes before it in Leviticus all the more haunting.

Leviticus releases in theaters on Friday, July 19.