{"id":644602,"date":"2026-06-18T03:17:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T03:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/644602\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T03:17:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T03:17:16","slug":"leviticus-is-a-landmark-lgbtq-horror-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/644602\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Leviticus’ Is a Landmark LGBTQ+ Horror Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThere are a lot of verses in the Bible\u2019s Book of Leviticus, but a single passage in particular seems to get trotted out time immemorial. No, not the \u201clove thy neighbor\u201d maxim<\/a>. You know the one. That whole \u201cthou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind\u201d bit. An Old Testament commandment employed as a cudgel by people who consistently ignore the core teachings of the New Testament, it\u2019s underwritten centuries of homophobia, hate, and pain. Writer-director Adrian Chiarella has undoubtedly had that verse quoted back to him, heard it shouted by anti-Pride protesters, experienced the ramifications of a sentence that\u2019s been used to justify persecuting an entire community.<\/p>\n

\n\tOriginally, the Australian filmmaker toyed<\/a> with fashioning a movie around those faux-religious, fire-and-brimstone exorcisms mistakenly thought to \u201ccure\u201d queer youth. Then an idea occurred to Chiarella: What if someone sought to counter the desires of young men and women not by ceremonial extraction, but by possession?<\/p>\n

\n\tDesigned as a genre provocation from the jump, Leviticus applies this simple, conceptual reversal as the starting point for both torn-from-headlines talking points and social-thriller shock and awe. It\u2019s the sort of feature debut that earns a \u201cwatch this space\u201d tag \u2014 a cinematic statement complemented and enhanced by one hell of an eye for composition, and two performances that toe the line between torrid and terrified. But it also marks a turning point in terms of queer horror<\/a> that simultaneously inspires firsthand fear for its protagonists and loathing for both its supernatural and human monsters. The metaphor it offers for the IRL creep show that is conversion therapy may not be subtle. But it\u2019s remarkably effective, and feels like a minor landmark in terms of representing and reflecting a community that\u2019s had a long, vital, and extremely complicated history with scary movies.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tBeing relocated to the rural suburbs of Australia does not have a lot of perks for Naim (Talk to Me\u2018s Joe Bird). The one thing this move to the middle of nowhere does have going for it is that Ryan (Stacy Clausen) also lives there. A local kid with a surfer vibe and a wrestler\u2019s physique, Ryan introduces the new kid in town to what passes for homegrown entertainment: watching snakes eat toads, aimlessly wandering through endless cul-de-sacs, breaking into an abandoned mill and giddily breaking whatever debris is inside it. When horseplay turns into an impromptu hookup, neither of the young men fight the urge. The attraction is palpable, even if the need to keep it on the down-low is inherently understood.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tBecause the church holds a lot of sway in this backwoods burg, and unsurprisingly, such couplings are frowned upon by the extremely conservative, extremely close-minded population. (See title.) It seems to be especially attractive to Naim\u2019s mom (Mia Wasikowska<\/a>), who\u2019s less a holy roller than a lost soul in desperate need of something to cling to after her divorce. It\u2019s also revealed that Ryan has been carnally carrying on with the pastor\u2019s son as well. Soon, a \u201cdeliverance healer\u201d (Bad Boy Bubby star and Australian cinema O.G. Nicholas Hope) comes to town and performs some sort of\u2026 ritual upon the son and Ryan. \u201cAll your lust, all your indecency, all your desires \u2014 it has to go now,\u201d he intones. Mysterious words are spoken. A lighter is held in front of the boys\u2019 faces. Cue convulsions and expressions of agony.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeveral days later, Naim witnesses the pastor\u2019s kid being violently assaulted by an invisible presence. Ryan has also had some unexplained incidents involving an unseen, malevolent force. Then Naim\u2019s mother enlists this so-called healer to \u201chelp\u201d him as well, and it\u2019s not long before he\u2019s having to defend himself from the same paranormal entity that\u2019s threatening Ryan. It\u2019s around this point that the movie establishes a few ground rules regarding its resident evil. This thing has been unleashed on a number of other teens in the area. It only attacks you when you\u2019re alone. And it comes to you in the form of the person you\u2019re hot for the most, all the better to murderously turn your attraction against you. It\u2019s hard know whether or not you\u2019re encountering a demon when it\u2019s a dead ringer for true love.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tA scene from Leviticus.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNEON<\/p>\n

\n\tLike we said: not subtle. Thankfully, Leviticus has a good grasp on how to leverage this conceit for scares and to score points about the insidiousness of mistaking hatred for salvation. Lust has long been used as catalyst for horror-film boogeymen and slasher-flick massacres, yet to simply label this as \u201cIt Follows but for same-sex relationships,\u201d while superficially accurate, doesn\u2019t quite do the movie justice. Chiarella\u2019s story is tapping into a very real prejudice, and a very genuine fear. The tension behind each \u201cis that the real Ryan, or a hellspawn using Ryan\u2019s face in order to rip Naim\u2019s head off?\u201d set piece \u2014 and there are several, choreographed for maximum nervous-system jolting \u2014 is continually paired with the reminder that the town\u2019s church has authorized these paranormal anti-LGBTQ<\/a> measures. What\u2019s more insidious than having someone weaponize your sexuality against you and claim it\u2019s in the name of \u201csaving\u201d your soul? The demon is simply a manifestation of something less bizarre and far uglier.<\/p>\n

\n\tShould you prefer your movies to be lighter in the metaphor department, you may find this queer horror movie a tad too heavy. Leviticus has more on its mind than translating real-life issues into genre fodder, however. It comes not to bury its gays<\/a>, but to praise how such soulmates find a way to let their romantic bonds endure even in the face of life-or-death situations. At one point, Ryan declares that if he has to spend the rest of his days trying to battle something that takes on the appearance of the person who makes his heart skip beats, he wants that something to resemble Naim. The line sounds silly when you read it. The swooning sentiment behind the statement comes through when you hear Clausen say it and see the reaction it provokes in Bird\u2019s character. For the majority of the movie, you\u2019re led to believe you\u2019ve been watching a horror film with a love story burbling underneath it. By the time you get to the final act, you come to realize that its actually the reverse: a love story that\u2019s inseparable from, but not beholden to, the horror film all around it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are a lot of verses in the Bible\u2019s Book of Leviticus, but a single passage in particular…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[187814,96,12663,9138,95897,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-644602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-cult-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-horror","tag-lgbtq","tag-mia-wasikowska","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}