Australian director Adrian Chiarella's debut feature Leviticus is the quietest horror release of the season—and the most unsettling. The film offers a supernatural threat, but the real terror is the community around its two teenage leads. It's also a romance, and a surprisingly tender one.
What happened
- First feature from Australian director Adrian Chiarella
- Stars Joe Bird (Talk to Me) and Stacy Clausen as Naim and Ryan
- Mia Wasikowska plays Naim's mother
- Released in Australian and US theaters
What the film is actually about
Naim has been uprooted from his old life and relocated to a remote backwater by his mother (Wasikowska), whose ties to a small religious community inspired the move. The group cites Leviticus to condemn homosexuality and governs every interaction in the settlement.
When Naim meets Ryan, a fellow restless teen, the connection is immediate. Their two discovery scenes play out with the coiled tension of a tight horror set piece. After the elders catch on, they respond with a ritualistic exorcism framed as healing. A demon shaped like love gets planted inside the boys, and from then on they cannot trust their own perception of what is real.
Bird's Naim broods at the edge of every frame. Clausen's Ryan reads that brooding as an invitation rather than a warning. Their dynamic carries the picture. Wasikowska gets limited screen time as the eerily calm mother, which leaves more room for the central pairing.
Our analysis
The supernatural thread is reliably underwhelming. The scares arrive in the spaces where genre elements aren't—in the silences between elders' judgments and the boys' private glances. Horror here is shorthand for a familiar cruelty, the kind that pretends to act from love.
The metaphor is direct. The boys' confusion about whether their bond is genuine or manufactured mirrors the exact confusion conversion therapy tries to install in its subjects. The film wears that meaning openly, and it works because the romance earns every moment of it. Allegory without emotional stakes feels like a sermon. Allegory with this much heart feels like an argument worth having.
The trade-off is clear: by committing fully to both genre and message, Leviticus risks alienating viewers who want only one. But for those who stay, it offers something rare—a horror film where the real monster is a world that refuses to accept you, and the real relief is finding someone who does.
Bottom line
Leviticus is a debut that knows exactly what it's doing and refuses to hedge. The genre machinery is scaffolding. The relationship is the building. Watch it for the performances and the argument, not the apparitions.
Key takeaways
- Leviticus is a debut feature from Australian director Adrian Chiarella
- The horror is rooted in community cruelty, not the supernatural
- Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen carry the film as Naim and Ryan
- The romance does the emotional heavy lifting
- In Australian and US theaters now
Frequently asked questions
Who directed Leviticus?
Adrian Chiarella, making his first feature.
Who stars in the film?
Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen lead, with Mia Wasikowska as Naim's mother.
What is the central conflict?
Naim and Ryan's relationship is condemned by their religious community, which subjects them to a demon-possession ritual framed as healing.
Is the film more horror or more romance?
Both, though the romance carries the emotional arc and the horror supplies the framing.
Source: timeout.com
