Leviticus

dir: Adrian Chiarella

2026

I’ll be honest, it’s not like there are any parts of the Bible or the Torah that aren’t problematic. If you’re not a godbotherer, the whole book is basically composed of every red flag possible that the patriarchy has to offer. Naming your horror film over the book of the Bible that contains the so-called Holiness Code governing how people of the (Levite) faith should or should not comport themselves sexually, is meant to be a direct provocation. Tell an alleged Christian who’s screaming against “the gays” where Jesus said anything about them or abortion, and invariably they mention “Leviticus!”, as if the rest of us have to take their fantasy book seriously, and Jesus didn’t even write it (probably got AI to write it).

Well, if you make a horror movie about this very idea, then I’m going to have to take it very seriously indeed.

This is an Australian film, which you can tell if you don’t know going into it by the sheer quantity of times that characters, teenage boys, call each other the so-called ‘c’ word. Scots brag about how comfortably they use it but Trainspotting didn’t drop it as many times as it’s dropped here. But it’s not a feature of the film, just a parenthetical bug. The real meat and potatoes of this flick is how scary the happy clappers are, how certain in their actions. The anointed. The chosen. The willingness they possess to torment others in the name of preventing anyone from ever being happy. Allegedly because they imagine an infinite being that’s ever so petty that it would care who rubs what against what, and not whether they had consent or not.

Who is the real villain in this horror film? Well, obviously the true villain is racism, no, wait, it’s not racism, it’s religion-derived homophobia, whether internalised or not. Teenage boys discovering that they have ‘feelings’ for each other can do some terrible things when they don’t want to admit to themselves and each other that they might be gay. This strange town also somehow seems to be in thrall to the local godbotherers, who are a step up from your local Anglicans and even the Catholics don’t go this hard. They seem more like evangelicals / Pentecostals, whose beliefs and actions would seem strange even to the Christian faithful.

Time for a minor second-hand confession: at university when I was at the halls of residence, I met someone who was from this kind of background, religiously speaking. I found out from another friend that this person’s parents had subjected them to an exorcism through their church. The purpose of the exorcism wasn’t because they were possessed and spitting pea soup while their head spun around or did unspeakable things with a crucifix: it was to exorcise the demon of lust, which they called Jezebel.

So this person went through puberty, the parents didn’t like it, brought an exorcist in to stop their teen from feeling desire for anyone or anything, and then everything was meant to be right in the world. I don’t know that this is what happened to trigger the event, but can you imagine accidentally catching your teenager masturbating and then deciding they needed to be exorcised by a priest for real?

Let’s just say that this person, at uni, eventually came to terms with their parent’s bullshit, went absolutely wild and made up not only for lost time but then some, as well. Here’s one for Jezebel, they might have said, at some stage, after a few lines and a few shots, why not.

When someone tells you that the premise of this flick is not realistic (I don’t mean the supernatural elements), tell them they’re dreaming. This is exactly the type of shit these nutjobs do, for the same purpose; they want other people to be as scared of sex as they are.

Scared of God, scared of sex, same difference, to them.

What’s different, beyond the rock hard, rock solid belief that one can pray the gay away if one just tries hard enough, something which has never been shown to work ever in human history whichever religion might preach it, the technique they use to dissuade teens from their natural tendencies takes things a step too far, which is very convenient for a horror film.

A deliverance healer (Nicholas Hope) is brought in, multiple times, and the problem for the local teens is that what he does isn’t bullshit, unlike the rest of their religion: this ritual actually does something, something truly terrible to them, as is intended.

Not by god, but by these stupid parents.

I can’t exactly encapsulate what it is, but it doesn’t enhance the quality of life of anyone involved that it’s done to. Something, some awful entity appears to them, when they’re alone, looking like the person they want the most, and then it either has sex with them, tries to kill them, or both.

The godbotherers want these teens to live in terror of their desires for the rest of their (short?) lives so that they never act on their impulses again. And it ends up killing them? This is the first time I think that religious types have ever tried to control people and it’s ended up backfiring.

It’s not like they’re hurting anyone. Oh, wait, no, they are hurting themselves, and hurting each other. Like the old song says, you always hurt the ones you love.

Two boys, and they very much are boys, mess around at an abandoned sawmill. Naim (Joe Bird) seems like he’s afraid of anything and everything, and Ryan (Stacy Clausen) seems like he’s afraid of nothing. They are mucking around in the way that boys do, but their energies seem to hint at something more, so almost daringly one kisses the other, and they get a glimpse of what could really exist between them.

They make a cute couple. Naim is the new boy in town, bitter and resentful at having to relocate, jumping at his own shadow, and not exactly out and proud. Ryan is more local, more entrenched, but no less circumspect when it comes to hiding his desires while they’re in town.

The (initial) problem is, Naim isn’t the only one into Ryan. Another local boy, the preacher’s son Hunter (Jeremy Blewitt) also violently tries to pursue Ryan, but, being the son of a preacher man who expounds against ‘the gays’ and all their permutations, he is more conflicted and more violent. His courtship of Ryan involves throwing heavy things at him and then attacking him with hands and mouth.

I… am not sure how I feel about this, but Naim clearly takes it personal. He is not repulsed by two boys kissing, but he is horribly jealous, and is ultimately the one that condemns them all to misery when he dobs on the boys and their skylarking, which results in the “deliverance healer” being called for.

What the fuck was Naim thinking? Well, he’s a teenage boy, so we’re not sure a lot of thinking was involved. Not seeming to be that religiously inclined himself, he seems to think that his actions would result in Hunter being punished somehow, leaving Ryan free to pal around with him.

Instead, this newly summoned entity pursues both of them, and eventually Naim, appearing as the one they love / desire, and trying to kill them. Hunter, for his troubles, gets his head ripped clean off.

Thanks, Naim, thanks a lot.

This is not a long film, clocking in just around 90 minutes or so, but there are times that it feels long, because the problem facing the remaining teens is that they have no money, have not completed their educations, have godbothering parents, still have no money, and are alternately trying to get away from and yet are perpetually trapped by this fucking town. They are trapped in vicious circles and cycles, and so are we.

Every time one of them appears to the other we wonder whether it’s the other boy or whether it’s the murderous entity, and whether it is or not usually results in the boys saying either trust me or stay away from me / stay with me / I have to leave / please don’t leave me alone.

It gets a bit repetitive, but, you know what? We all had relationships like that at some stage of our youth. Caustic, damaging, push / pull, come closer / go away, incredibly harmful and incredibly hot dramatic relationships. Most of us got to survive, not like some of the poor kids here.

But most of us also had the luxury of escape, which these characters don’t. Yes, there is a clear supernatural element to the film, but it’s really easy to see the impact of the entity summoned by these religious nuts as a metaphor for what someone might go through as a young gay, lesbian or trans person in a shitty town (or even a big city or suburb: school is not an escape or a refuge, not always).

And when it’s your family that’s the one doing it to you, well, sometimes there’s no escape whatsoever. I joked earlier about who the true villain of the piece is, and I’m sad to say the worst offender is Naim’s mum (Mia Wasikowska). It’s not for her extremist beliefs. It’s not for her putting her standing within a religious community ahead of her son’s safety and wellbeing. It’s the cold manner in which she decided that a dead son, or a perpetually terrified one, was preferable to accepting that her son was gay.

Does it kinda let religious extremism off the hook? Kinda, sorta. The happyclappers, happily clapping away and swaying to their insipid hymns aren’t shown as actively signing on for the monstrosity they unleash on the kids: most of them don’t know of the horror even if they approve of the idea of the conversion therapy. They don’t necessarily want the kids dead.

Other local teens who want to bully Ryan and Naim, well, they want to bully them because they’re sadistic bullies. The religious aspect doesn’t motivate them: the fact that Ryan and Naim are gay is just an excuse. Any difference will do in a pinch.

You know who else doesn’t have an excuse? Naim. How’s that for an added complication?

Joe Bird isn’t a household name but to fans of Australian horror flicks he’s a familiar face, since he played the poor younger brother to one of the main characters who again suffered horribly at the hands of the supernatural in Talk to Me a few years ago. Completely different role, very different film, but there are some elements in common (Aussie aussie aussie oi oi no third oi for you) with that earlier masterpiece by the Phillipou brothers. It maybe also has a bit of a debt to It Follows, which is a fine horror film to be indebted to.

The director here has a less brutal, more delicate story that he wants to tell. It’s hard to point to a horror film and say “it’s clearly semi-autobiographical!”, but I can guess with a certain amount of comfort that Adrian Chiarella grew up gay in some shitty town / suburb of Victoria, and came up with this scenario perhaps to exorcise some demons of his own.

There’s a tenderness to what the director tries to capture (when ears aren’t being ripped off or people aren’t mangling each other) amidst the brutality, that doesn’t in any way de-emphasise the romance, the love, perhaps at the centre of it or the horror of what’s happening (that homophobia, internalised or externalised, kills people). That seeing the face of the person you love / lust for most doesn’t guarantee that you aren’t in harm’s way. That coming up with a curse that causes the face of the person you love most to appear as the mask of the entity trying to kill you is a truly diabolical concept, not one that a benevolent god could ever conjure. Maybe there’s an aspect of the story wrestling with faith and desire, trying to wish that the world allowed for both.

But then this world says “Yeah, nah”.

Joe’s nervy and dread-filled performance as Naim is solid, but Stacy Clausen, as the charismatic and cheeky Ryan, is a total standout. He has a quality, both endearing and something of a dirtbag, that Heath Ledger had back in the day (like in the Two Hands, A Knight's Tale era, not the Dark Knight era). The film works because they work so well together. Like any romantic flick, even when we know they’re actors actoring, if we can’t believe that they feel something, it doesn’t resonate. For my money their performances resonated deeply.

And kudos for getting that incredible Frank Ocean song for the ending of the film, unbelievable good fortune. Not to detract from Jed Kurzel’s score work which is unsettling and arresting in equal measure. But getting Self Control? Amazing work.

8 times youth may be wasted on the young but this world doesn’t make it easy for them to survive out of 10

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“If you see me again, run. Because it won’t be me. It will never be me.” - Leviticus

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi795134745/