Leviticus: Movie Review

Cast: Joe Bird, Stacy Clausen, Mia Wasikowska, Jeremy Blewitt, Ewan Leslie
Director: Adrian Chiarella

The idea of the horror of coming out in a small rural backwater is not a new one. 

But in director Adrian Chiarella's claustrophobic and upsetting drama Leviticus, pouring it through a prism of conversion therapy and aching first love makes this truly memorable.

Talk To Me's Joe Bird plays teenager Naim, who's recently moved to the industrial town in Victoria in Australia with his mum (Wasikowska, one of the film's more upsetting villains of the piece). Fostering an attraction to classmate Ryan (Clausen), a love blossoms.

But when the religious-heavy elements of the town get wind of what's happened, the pair's thrust before a hell-and-brimstone priest, who subjects them to a level of attempted therapy to pray the gay away. However, something else emerges and Naim finds himself hunted and haunted by a violent Ryan who's determined to harm him. And as if that wasn't terrifying enough, Ryan claims Naim is hunting him...

Leviticus does much with little.

From an oppressive soundtrack to a gaping chasm of industrial vistas promising nothing but nihilism, the film does much to seize hope from the most hopeless of settings. 

But by adding in an element of It Follows (albeit one whose internal logic becomes more fuzzy as time goes on) and some genuinely troubling one-on-one scenes that crackles with uncertainty and intensity, Chiarella constructs something that feels both timeless and timely.

It's fascinating that the demons that are released by the religious intervention are ones that those affected most want - Chiarella seems to be interested in making real the allegory of the idea that it's the thing you want most that will hurt you, but by holding off on any kind of didactic and overt messaging, his film's more powerful for it.

It plays deeply to the idea that youngsters are told romance is bad - and gay romance even more so. Something which seems unheard of in these modern times, but is becoming more common and in the small-town backwater Australian setting where family and church make most of the decisions, it's utterly terrifying.

All in all, while Leviticus relies on the occasional pernicious jump scare, the horrors are more psychological and troubling - with a strong cast and a universal theme, it emerges as one of the most upsetting and searing dramas of the year.