Leviticus Review: Nowhere to Run in a Small Town

Many queer awakening films seem to end where Leviticus begins, with the nerdy and awkward kid finally getting the rough-and-tumble object of their affections to accept their love and their own desires. In Adrian Chiarella’s Australian religious horror, it’s the first real interaction between trembling Niam (Joe Bird, Talk to Me) and tousle-haired tough kid Ryan (Stacy Clausen).

But teen hearts break easily, and when Niam discovers that Ryan also has something going on with local bad boy Hunter (Jeremy Blewitt), his jealousy gets the better of him. Horrified by their Biblical sin, the adults of this highly religious industrial town bring a Deliverance Healer (Nicholas Hope) to quite literally pray the gay away. What’s not explained is that the prayer is more of a spell, summoning a murderous entity that disguises itself as the one person you desire the most. Trust, it seems, becomes a life-or-death issue.

The entity becomes a clear metaphor for the curse of conversion therapy, of the idea that parents wish for the death of their gay child, and how that offspring’s own desires are turned against them. It’s a powerful metaphor, striking and many-faceted, with an ingenious twist that makes this something other than an Antipodean It Follows knockoff. Unlike the unrelenting sexually transmitted supernatural stalker of David Mitchell’s film, this entity only strikes when the victim is by themselves, allowing Chiarella to inject a subtle plea for both the power of relationships and the value of community. If you’re with someone other than just yourself, you’ll be OK.

However, there’s a real question as to whether first-time writer/director Chiarella really knows how to apply that metaphor. He occasionally breaks his own rules about the entity when the story he wants to tell requires it (additionally, theologians may also wonder exactly what this has to do with Leviticus 10:1-2, the chapter that the title and the Deliverance Healer reference that’s actually about what kind of incense to burn). Those horror elements are terrifyingly and sometimes gruesomely executed onscreen, but feel underdeveloped at the script level, as if Chiarella was more interested in the characters. Putting his young lovers at the heart of the film is no bad thing, but it doesn’t feel like he put comparable effort into the cosmology around them.

There’s no secret surrounding the fact that it’s a lot easier to sell a horror film than a queer indie drama set in rural Australia. The addition of the unstoppable force will attract a much bigger audience than a more conventional drama. Yet while audiences may expect something like the horror stylings of fellow Australian filmmaker the Philippou brothers (Talk to Me, Bring Her Back), Leviticus delivers something closer to the social realism of Romper Stomper or Snowtown. What viewers will mostly get is a portrait of a small-town bigotry, and how it uses religion as a socially acceptable way to break the young. The exact reason that Naim’s mother (Mia Wasikowska, Damsel, Piercing) dragged him to this faded nowhere is never explicit but seems tied to the sense of community that the church will provide her. Against this background, Naim and Ryan’s reasons for staying closeted remain obvious, while the two young actors play out their yearning with an astonishing depiction of teenage intimacy.

Indeed, these are the most captivating scenes in the whole film, grounded yet sweet. It’s a depiction of young love, of universally recognizable awkward fumbling and fragile hopes. It might even lead a few viewers to a moment of understanding and empathy alongside their jump scares, and that seems to be Chiarella’s real intention.

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This article appears in June 19 • 2026.