Leviticus might be a horror at first glance – but it’s really about what makes the horrors worth enduring.
Leviticus has been one of the buzziest horror films of the year so far, a feature debut for Australian director Adrian Chiarella, and one I’ve been really looking forward to. Because the idea is just so damn good – gay teenagers haunted in a homophobic community by the very image of the people they love. Horror has always been, as far as I’m concerned, the place to explore queerness – check these out if you don’t believe me. But one good idea doesn’t a great film make – so how exactly does Leviticus fare beyond its killer premise?
The movie follows Naim (Joe Bird, one of my all-time Little Sweetie Pies from Talk to Me) as he moves with his recently-widowed mother to join an Evangelical community. There, he meets Ryan (Stacey Clausen), another teenage boy who he soon begins a romantic and physical relationship with – however, when they’re discovered, they’re forced through a violent conversion therapy that leaves them both stalked by malevolent versions of the other.
At the heart of Leviticus is the central metaphor that drives the plot – the way that the affection these boys have for each other is, figuratively and literally, what destroys them in this community that rejects them for it. As strong an idea as it is, I was impressed with how Chiarella teases out the details to keep it from becoming too blunt or basic – there’s a lot of nuance in how the world around Naim and Ryan is constructed, from the complex reasons for Naim’s mother’s choice to put him through the conversion therapy that leaves him terrorized to the way that violence and aggression is framed as a facsimile for intimacy before these characters can truly express how they feel about each other.
Chiarella creates a distinct, oppressive world in these suburbs, with the throbbing beat of the factory underpinning so much of the sound design to the slightly-surreal industrial structures that fill out the skyline; when the horror begins to creep in, it feels like almost a natural extension of how crushing and restrictive this place is, the way the violence turns in on the main characters with monstrous efficiency and cruelty. And God, is it cruel – the way the doppelgangers twist their closeness, learning better how to imitate their touch and voice the more time they spend together, is mean in a way that serves that metaphor to perfection.
But I think what ultimately makes Leviticus as brilliant as it is is how it finds sweetness and softness in amongst the bleakness of this story. It would have been much simpler to tell a brutal, unforgiving tale about the savage ways that regressive communities can tear apart queer people – for a while, that’s where I thought the film was going to go, with how dark it gets. But, instead, it draws out the romance between Naim and Ryan with a beautiful clarity that captures the fluttering, exciting, and complicated emotions of teen same-sex romance – it convinces you that this would, despite it all, be worth it for them, and that’s the most impressive thing it pulls off. This is where the central performances really come to life for me, particularly Joe Bird as Naim, who puts in an almost painfully vulnerable performance that is as easily harmed as he held – and the chemistry he shares with Clausen is some of the best I’ve seen in recent memory. What other film could make calling someone a dickhead romantic, you know?
Leviticus is a brilliant debut, one that could have become bogged down in its metaphor but moves with a lightness of touch that doesn’t let it give in to the bleakness at the story’s heart. A romance as much as a horror, it’s very interesting start to Chiarella’s career, and I can’t wait to see what he follows (no pun intended) it with. What did you think of Leviticus, and where does it rank up against other iconic queer horror movies? Let me know the comments!
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via Tales from the Paulside)
No But Listen 