{"id":739489,"date":"2026-06-16T01:48:05","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T01:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/739489\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T01:48:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T01:48:05","slug":"whats-the-opposite-of-a-gay-demon-the-creepy-new-australian-horror-film-thats-getting-global-buzz-australian-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/739489\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018What\u2019s the opposite of a gay demon?\u2019: The creepy new Australian horror film that\u2019s getting global buzz | Australian film"},"content":{"rendered":"

Film-maker Adrian Chiarella knows there\u2019s nothing more terrifying than what you\u2019ll read in the news. As a gay man, he has long been horrified by reports of religious leaders everywhere from the US<\/a> to Indonesia<\/a> attempting to purge \u201chomosexual demons\u201d from young people as they cry, convulse and vomit. The horror buff in him could see a great scary movie in these modern-day exorcisms \u2013 but there was just one problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more I explored that directly as an idea for a horror movie \u2013 like, what if it was literally about an exorcist that comes and performs this ritual? \u2013 the more it seemed to justify the belief those people had about a \u2018gay demon\u2019,\u201d Chiarella says. So instead, he started asking, \u201cWell, what\u2019s the opposite of that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Chiarella\u2019s search to subvert the idea of an exorcism became the premise of Leviticus<\/a>, which premiered at the Sundance film festival in January and screened at the Sydney film festival this month. Instead, his version of an exorcist ritual doesn\u2019t banish a demon but ushers one in.<\/p>\n

Writer-director Adrian Chiarella with Clausen and Bird on the set of Leviticus, filmed on the outskirts of Melbourne. Photograph: Neon<\/p>\n

The film centres on two teenage boys, Naim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen), who embark on a tentative romance in their Bible belt Australian town. But once their parents get a whiff of what\u2019s going on, they are hauled to church and subjected to a religious ceremony which unleashes a shapeshifting bogeyman that takes the form of whoever its victim is most attracted to. Suddenly, Naim and Ryan must wonder if that teenage boy standing in the shadows is really the guy they\u2019ve been stealing kisses with \u2013 or a monster hellbent on leaving them dead.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a creepy horror flick with lots to say about the shape of modern homophobia \u2013 and looks poised to be a hit. During Sundance, Leviticus was bought for A$7.1m by distributor Neon, which is giving the film a US release the day after it hits Australian screens on 18 June. Early reviews have been positive<\/a>, while audiences at the Sydney film festival rushed to Letterboxd to interpret the film\u2019s socially pointed Big Bad \u2013 a monster Chiarella wanted to keep \u201cbroad enough\u201d to relate to anyone\u2019s experience, despite coming hot off the heels of the conversation around the recent New South Wales conversion practices ban<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nicholas Hope is the film\u2019s \u2018Deliverance Healer\u2019, who performs the town\u2019s \u2018religious ceremonies\u2019. Photograph: Ben Saunders<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople say to me, oh, it\u2019s a conversion therapy metaphor, and I\u2019m like, not necessarily,\u201d Chiarella says. \u201cIt can stand for anything in that space around the coercive measures different communities come up with to control young people\u2019s lives when they\u2019re going through this stage of their development.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dread and terror in the film comes not just from that ever-stalking entity but the ordinary humans around Naim and Ryan. There are the townspeople who seem unwilling to step up and protect their young men; a culpable inaction that could stand in for everything from the early days of the HIV epidemic to the politicians who allowed hateful rhetoric to spread during Australia\u2019s marriage equality debate. And, of course, there are the God-fearing parents who volunteer their sons for exorcism and welcome the demon into their lives under the pretence of \u201chelping\u201d dissuade them from their desires.<\/p>\n

Chiarella originally conceived of Naim\u2019s religious mother, Arlene (Mia Wasikowska), as a classic, malevolent \u201chorror mum\u201d, \u00e0 la Piper Laurie in Carrie. He later realised \u201cthere\u2019s something more terrifying about her just being so underhandedly natural and, in this very straightforward way, just going, \u2018This is what I believe\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mia Wasikowska plays Naim\u2019s mother, Arlene. Photograph: Ben Saunders<\/p>\n

He also knew that for the horror of what can be done to young people in the name of faith to really resonate, Leviticus needed actual teenagers in the two lead roles \u2013 a casting \u201cchallenge\u201d for any film-maker, and the reason so many teen films are populated by actors on the other side of 25. Eventually Chiarella found the then 18-year-old Bird, an Adelaide native who viewers may recognise from his pivotal role in another Australian horror movie, Talk to Me<\/a>: the 2022 box office smash that grossed A$140m worldwide.<\/p>\n

Leviticus owes a certain stylistic debt to that Philippou brothers film: both take place not by the beach or the bush, but in a bleaker, greyer middle Australia (Talk to Me in the suburbs of Adelaide; Leviticus was shot on the dreary outskirts of Melbourne). The broad Aussie accents, funnel web spider references and shots of ageing weatherboard houses add to that sense of place, while the natural landscape brings its own hostility \u2013 Leviticus\u2019s monster can only appear when its victims are alone, making the underpopulated, wide open spaces of regional Australia a scary place to be.<\/p>\n

\u2018Ours, I think, is a much more sincere love story about growing up and what it means to be a teenager,\u2019 says Chiarella. Photograph: Ben Saunders<\/p>\n

Chiarella wanted both international and local audiences to recognise his film as Australian. After the recent global success of Talk to Me<\/a>, plus enduring legacy horror films like The Babadook<\/a> and Lake Mungo<\/a>, it felt like something genre fans were eager for more of.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very aware that we were going to make a film that fit into this \u2018Aussie horror\u2019 sub-genre \u2026 We didn\u2019t want to hide that fact, we really wanted to embrace it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Bird says that while he \u201cloves horror so much\u201d, he did not set out to become a homegrown scream king.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not necessarily that horror is this genre I\u2019m chasing after \u2013 I think that Australia has just been creating great scripts that happen to be in the horror space.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But what both Bird and Chiarella think is unique about Leviticus is the queer love story hidden between the jump scares. After all, what could be more romantic than telling your crush that if you have to be stalked by an unstoppable murderous entity, you\u2019re glad it looks like them?<\/p>\n

Chiarella thinks most horror movies have \u201ca much more cynical point of view\u201d than Leviticus. \u201cOurs, I think, is a much more sincere love story about growing up and what it means to be a teenager,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ve got some scares, we\u2019ve got some nods to the gory history of horror, but ultimately it\u2019s a movie about finding first love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leviticus is released on 18 June in Australian cinemas and on 19 June in the US<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Film-maker Adrian Chiarella knows there\u2019s nothing more terrifying than what you\u2019ll read in the news. As a gay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-739489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}