Purity, impurity, and the laws and rituals designed to manage the boundary between them — these are the cornerstone concerns of the Book of Leviticus, the third book of the Old Testament. The themes are refracted through a crooked prism in “Leviticus,” the Australian writer/director Adrian Chiarella’s phenomenally entertaining horror debut that plays like an episode of “Heated Rivalry” ghoulishly crossed with “It Follows.”
The film opens with a menacing overture: A young woman, working late at a public pool, seems to recognize someone rinsing off in the shower, but there’s nobody there. “What are you doing here?” she asks the open air. She enters the shower beside the disembodied presence and begins moaning as if in the throes of a sexual encounter. But the sounds turn to screams when she is suddenly struck and slammed to the ground — all by an assailant only she can see.
From here, the movie pivots to Naim (Joe Bird), an Australian teenager who has just moved to a new suburb. We meet Naim while he’s hanging out with a new classmate, Ryan (Stacy Clausen), killing time inside an abandoned mill on the edge of town. In the cavernous, warehouse-like space, the boys turn into physical exhibitionists, showing off for one another by hoisting heavy chunks of scrap metal and flinging them across the ruin. The contest soon gives way to aggression, with the high schoolers shoving each other, then wrestling.
But behind the toughness is something more tender. Chiarella is hyper-attuned to the ways that men not only shield emotion through machismo, but also couch affection in physical force. Tussling on the ground of the mill, the boys pause once Ryan has Naim in a pinned position. Ryan grins down, then kisses him. Stunned, Naim pulls away before grabbing Ryan’s head to kiss him back.
So begins a tale of ill-fated teenage love complicated by the fact that the boys live in an exceptionally repressed religious community. We soon learn that Naim’s grief-stricken single mother (Mia Wasikowska) moved them to the town so they could join its local Christian parish, an almost cultishly conservative group to which Ryan and his family also belong. It’s clear that in this insular social world, homosexuality is considered a sin. But as long as the boys can keep their romance private — they even speak about it in code, asking one another if they’ve ever “been to the mill” before, rather than asking if they’ve been with other boys — their affair is safe.
The security doesn’t last long. Soon, Naim happens upon Ryan alone with the pastor’s son (Jeremy Blewitt), hurling stones at one another before collapsing into each other’s arms to make out. Dazed and distressed, Naim sprints to the pastor’s house, where he impulsively reports what he saw.
This is where the movie’s horror genre kicks into high gear, with the aggrieved pastor enlisting a deliverance healer to rid his son and Ryan of their demons. At first, the ceremony — performed publicly before the entire parish — seems like a hoax. But as the healer grows graver, invoking notions of lust, desire, and indecency, the boys undergo a kind of exorcism. While Naim and the others watch on in horror, the boys gasp for air and tumble to the floor, writhing as foam bubbles out of their mouths.
You may be able to guess where this is all going — which is to say, directly into “It Follows” terrain. Whoever undergoes the deliverance ceremony is thereafter haunted by a shape-shifting menace invisible to everyone but the person being pursued. But unlike that cinematic predecessor, in which the pursuer took the form of a variety of strangers, here, the stalker invariably appears as the victim’s crush. Call it internalized homophobia incarnate.
The remaining scenes draw on familiar teenage horror tropes, with flecks of fresh insight. Horror fans are familiar with the experience of, “I see someone I know, but it’s not really them” — it’s a primal horror conceit, dovetailing with stories about doppelgängers and changelings, possession and the uncanny familiar more generally. In “Leviticus,” we find the phenomenon of the false loved one, a trope that similarly appears in horror classics like “The Exorcist” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and more recent films like “Us” and “Talk to Me” (the latter of which also stars Bird).
“They want us to be scared of each other,” Ryan tells Naim in a rare moment of insight, referring to the Church parishioners’ goal of making the lovers distrust one another. For once, both Naim and Ryan have undergone the deliverance ceremony — Naim is subjected to it soon after — neither can know when they’re actually seeing one another versus when they’re being baited by the violent being. The deliverance healer, in his conservative brutality, has succeeded in making the boys instinctively flee from the person they love and desire the most.
As in many horror films of this type, plot holes start to form. The menace only appears when the victims are “alone” — but how alone are we talking? Does someone in the next room count? How about someone a few meters away? There isn’t much consistency to the rule, nor much logic to the fact that bystanders seem to turn a blind eye as the boys are continually brutalized. But by attaching the familiar concepts to queer themes — for instance, suggesting that peers assume that the now-outed gay boys, who periodically show up bruised and bloody, are being targeted by homophobic bullies — the movie grounds the eeriness in real-world affliction.
“Leviticus” is not a perfect horror film; its ending feels abrupt, and some side plots feel unfinished. Wasikowska, doing her best with a thin character, feels particularly overlooked. But the film’s moody atmosphere — including a soundtrack full of clanks and bangs — makes it an enjoyably disquieting ride.
Grade: B+
“Leviticus” premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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