A film that begins as a bittersweet story of first love before becoming about the way a hateful world poisons the great beauty of life, writer-director Adrian Chiarella’s feature directorial debut “Leviticus” is a horror discovery of immense power that marks him as an exciting new filmmaking voice.
Chiarella’s film is small in scope but shattering in emotional range, slowly burrowing under your skin. Once it makes its home there, there is no shaking free of its haunting, heartbreaking and surprisingly harmonious vision.
Similar in premise as well as execution to genre classics like “It Follows” and “The Thing,” the film begins with two teenage boys (played by the excellent duo of Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen) finding loving refuge in each other’s embrace in their small Australian town.
This is not to last, as the community of adults around them, including Mia Wasikowska’s increasingly menacing matriarch, attempts to turn them against each other. In a sequence that starts darkly silly before becoming all-consumingly sinister, family members and the church community conjure up murderous entities disguised as Naim (Bird) and Ryan (Clausen), each appearing to the other in the guise of their beloved.
The dark visions are meant to keep them or anyone who is queer from being together or expressing their love, making fear a part of their daily lives in the hopes that it will violently snuff out their queerness. If that doesn’t work, the entities will literally kill them.
It’s horror as a metaphor for poisonous homophobia and the way fear can be a weapon. However, while this is an inherently painful and inescapably heavy subject, the film is more than just about trauma for the sake of it. This is also a deeply felt portrait of its two nuanced, well-drawn characters that brings a welcome patience to how it builds the story around them.
From the opening moments that create a subtly disquieting dread to the gently moving final shot, “Leviticus” sweeps you up in the characters’ love and passion but also in the fear that threatens to destroy their lives. The film’s sweet snapshots of the two lying side by side have as much power as the horrifying shots of their violent doppelgängers watching them. It knocks you flat as it offers a quietly powerful rejoinder to the nightmares of the world.
But it’s a long journey to get there, full of a suffocating sense of doom that emerges from places that are supposedly meant to be safe. Chiarella is most interested in exploring how, for all the supernatural monsters that threaten the characters, the greatest horrors can come from others. People like Naim’s mother (Wasikowska) claim to be well-intentioned, but this only makes their betrayal that much more devastating.
Naim is a flawed, complicated figure who makes one decision that brings harm to others, providing a layer of guilt to the fear. The film doesn’t shy away from how awful this is, ensuring the slow path of redemption that it takes him on cuts deep. When we then get fully thrust into the darkness in one extended nighttime sequence, you don’t dare look away for even a moment.
On a technical level, everything from the captivating close-ups by cinematographer Tyson Perkins to the sinister sound design by Emma Bortignon and score by Jed Kurzel grab hold of you on a deep, visceral level. Even when the story can get tangled up and stumble as it hits some familiar genre beats, every element of the film’s construction makes even the most exposition-heavy scenes absolutely chilling.
When the duo realizes there is no easy escape from what is following them, “Leviticus” shifts into being about the terror of enduring a life of repression and fear. But it finds a bittersweet, beautiful grace note when you least expect it to. For all the crushing dread the film conjures, it also captures how, even in a world of immense pain, the most courageous act can be to save another.
