Leviticus review: tender and terrifying

Anyone who’s grown up queer in a time or place where it’s unsafe to do so will feel the anxious dread lurking beneath the surface of Melbourne filmmaker Adrian Chiarella’s Sundance smash, Leviticus – keenly.

But for all the violence inflicted on young, closeted people’s bodies and minds in his richly layered debut feature, Leviticus also glows with the red-hot flush of first love. It’s a surprisingly tender reminder that we are strongest when we stand together, rejecting the prejudices that keep us frightened and alone.

Marking its Australian debut at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, Leviticus launches us into its spooky mythos with a cracker of a cold open. We watch, from an alienating distance, a swimming pool attendant mid-closing up, rippling blue reflections eerily cold cast on shadowy tiled surfaces. When a shower turns on seemingly by itself, you might be forgiven for emitting an instinctual groan at the trademark dumbness soon-to-be-dead person investigating whatever goes bump in the night rather than getting the hell out of sight.

But it soon becomes apparent that they can see someone/thing that we cannot, with gifted cinematographer Tyson Perkins framing this ghostly encounter from a distance, across the pool itself. Soon, an ear-piercing shriek leads to blood smeared on tiles.

Not-so-urban legend

Much like an urban legend, this terrifying slaughter will wind its way into Chiarella’s sharply constructed story later, a hushed rumour that suddenly reveals the stakes all too clearly. But first, the filmmaker invests appropriate time in our soon-to-be-threatened protagonists, the nervy Naim (Talk to Me’s Joe Bird all grown up) and jockier, singlet-rocking Ryan (Crazy Fun Park star Stacy Clausen).

With them barely on speaking terms at school, Naim is understandably confused by Ryan’s sudden desire to hang out after class. He goes along for the bike ride anyway as they head to their slowly suffocating town’s abandoned mill. (In a minor yet distracting niggle, I’m not sure why its chimneys are still billowing). That they encounter a snake devouring a frog en route might be portentous enough to abort, but teen hormones being what they are, their roughhousing soon turns into a roll around on the dusty floor, next to what turns out to be a Chekhovian steel pipe.

Hidden away from the world, Naim’s confidence grows and Ryan’s armour drops. As gorgeous as this emerging romance is, Chiarella keenly establishes that their lot is even tougher than that of your average country kid. This town, surrounded by ominously observing electricity pylons with a touch of the Wicker Man about them, is also a deeply religious one, where the cloistered residents meet in a cinder block chapel.

Naim’s mum, Arlene (Mia Wasikowska) brought them here after undergoing some unspoken trauma that sees her drawing closer to her faith. While she and the other adults aren’t outright cultish abusers – her early jokiness with Naim is endearing – the slow-choking stranglehold of groupthink is nonetheless present. It’s their way or the highway to Melbourne.

Leviticus: casting the first stone

Chiarella is also spot-on that while a teen lad’s lust can be all-consuming, it’s also prone to being shared. So it’s genuinely heartbreaking that just as Naim is tumbling into this newfound freedom while Ryan guardedly maintains his distance at school, Ryan is also mucking around with servo attendant Hunter (Jeremy Blewitt).

When Naim spots them kissing much more roughly in Ryan’s backyard, engaged in bizarrely biblical stone throwing amidst a ghostly flutter of drying bed sheets, he cracks it. In a Judas-like fit, he tells Hunter’s dad, the local pastor played by Ewen Leslie (less terrifying than he’s usually cast, surprisingly). Davida McKenzie (real-life sister of Thomasin) is also impressive in a small but pivotal role, as Hunter’s sibling, Izzie, though again, a teeny niggle: her doing a jigsaw of a very Old Nick-coded black ram is a touch too on-the-nose.

The real terror comes in the form of Bad Boy Bubby legend Nicholas Hope as the deliverance ‘healer’ dialled in to cast out the ‘demon’ of homosexuality. It’s more frightening still that Chiarella chooses to downplay the ceremony instead of presenting the usual Exorcist-style drama, though Hunter and Ryan wind up in convulsions nonetheless.

Without giving too much of the story’s bones away, the evil unleashed on the town is not a punishment for loving someone of the same sex. Rather, it’s a manifestation of the violence that persecutes innocent lives for doing so freely. With a touch of It Follows, the malevolent spirit that stalks the lads mimics the object of their desires and only attacks when they are alone, weaponising both their affections and the poisonous isolation of the closet.

There are threads to follow, including a chilling callback to that opener, with the frenetically choreographed mayhem that ensues all the more unsettling because the brutal truth of Naim’s betrayal hangs in the air. We are on edge whenever the boys are alone, with Arlene becoming more distant (Wasikowska is so good at subtle shifts in demeanour), brushing off her son when he chooses to sleep on her bedroom floor, a physical hint of discomfort that the shunned will feel like a flinch. We second-guess every moment Ryan and Naim are together, with a fly screen confessional particularly clever.

Burning up

With a commanding handle on character, story and subtext, Chiarella deftly builds the world of Leviticus. There is wry humour amongst the horror, with particular lols at the unbothered servo attendant who is both very Aussie and somehow universal in their “I’m not paid enough for this shit”-ness.

There’s an astonishing beauty in the flames of this rebuttal of ancient codes of morality that left no room for grace; Bird and Clausen are on fire here. Their remarkable performances are bolstered by Jed Kurzel’s slow-burning rumble of a score and Nick Fenton’s nimble editing. Chiarella and his team ensnare or our care and, sheesh, makeup artist Rebecca Buratto takes no prisoners with her gruesome prosthetics work, ears be damned.

If it begins to feel like you’re that unfortunate frog stuck in a snake’s salivating jaw, trust in the deliverance that awaits.

Leviticus screens again at Sydney Film Festival on 6, 7 and 8 June before opening in Australian cinemas on 18 June 2026.