Back in February at this year’s Sundance, buyers reached the first deal of the film festival with the pick up of Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus, produced by the Australian Causeway Films that also helped make Bring Her Back and the Babadook. Previously known for some well received short films in the past decade, Chirarella has kept busy directing episodes of several TV series amid writing and directing Leviticus.
The rapid sale of Leviticus and its current summer release in theaters accurately reflects the quality, relevance, and resonance of this film described as conversion therapy supernatural horror. Yet for all its moments of darkness and uncanny terror, the ultimate message of Leviticus is one of resilience and hope.
Newly arrived in a small, industrial town in Victoria following the death of his father, Naim (Joe Bird) and his mother Arlene (Mia Wasikowska) become members of the conservative Christian community at the social heart of the community. While his mother goes all-in for the extreme religiosity, Naim quietly and distantly observes, trying to find connection in the new setting, his gaze turning to schoolmate and fellow congregant Ryan (Stacy Clausen). While breaking into an abandoned factory as teens will do, Naim and Ryan begin a romance they need to keep secret. However, when Naim subsequently sees Ryan kissing the pastor’s son Hunter (Jeremy Blewitt), the angered and jealous Naim goes in revenge to tell Hunter’s parents what he has witnessed.
The pastor brings a ‘deliverance healer’ (Nicholas Hope) to the congregation for a public ceremony to cleanse Ryan and Hunter of their homosexual desires. Still in love with Ryan, and perhaps a bit traumatized by the consequences of his knee-jerk hostile action of revenge, Naim continues to keep an eye on Ryan, and Hunter. He immediately observes that neither boy seems to have lost their desire, even though they are no longer meeting up. Instead they have gained a panicked fear and bizarre behavior, including talking to people that don’t appear to be there in a fashion that quickly turns from playful or passionate desire to violence and panic in a heartbeat.
Watching Hunter one night at the gas station where he works, Naim sees Hunter interacting with an unseen entity, only for him to suddenly begin choking and levitating into the air before being dragged away into surrounding fields. When Hunter’s head is later found, Naim goes to see the police to relate what all he has seen. Understandably unbelieving, the officer dismisses Naim’s report. But the officer also also goes to Naim’s mother to express concern over Naim’s mental state, and most heinously reveals Naim’s relationship with Ryan.
Arlene hires the deliverance healer to come back and carry out the ceremony on her son. Only then does Naim begin to understand, through personal experience, what he had observed happening to Ryan and Hunter. The ceremony has called a demon of sorts, an entity who appears to them exactly as the person they most desire, a doppelgänger who will pursue and seduce them, only to hurt them, tearing them apart once it has gotten them in grasp. Terrified, Naim and Ryan seek to reconnect and figure out a way to survive and perhaps cure themselves of this curse. But is it possible for them to meet one another when their desire has been poisoned, when they can’t be sure whether the face they greet is the person they love, or a creature sent to destroy them?
One can easily see the conversion therapy symbolism of this plot: the judgmental and bigoted abuse of religion for a process that not only utterly fails to accomplish its stated goals but poisons, harms, and can even destroy individuals, families, and communities. Leviticus takes all of this reality and gives it a physical and immediate reality through the supernatural.
But there is other symbolism running throughout the film as well, most particularly that of fire. Not only does fire become important to the plot, it’s also present throughout in shots of the oil refineries of the desolate industrial landscape outside town. And it’s present metaphorically in the desires that ignite the passions of Naim and Ryan as well as their resolve to survive what society — their very parents — have done to them, to continue their love despite endless efforts to deny it.
The title of the film refers, of course, to the Jewish book of law that contains condemnation of homosexuality and rules against it (alongside other prohibitions such as wearing garments of mixed cloth.) Within the Christian “Old Testament” of the Bible, the Book of Leviticus clearly holds great importance for the legalistic community of the film. Writings within the Christian New Testament also contain cultural statements against homosexuality, but even more famously state the foundational positive importance of faith, hope, and love. And these are exactly the elements that Naim and Ryan find in themselves and their situation to overcome their ‘curse’ and live despite it.
The success of Leviticus lies not just in its overall message and ultimate solution and positivity of loving and living even amid danger and oppression. It does this with overt symbolism that never seems heavy-handed or forced. It appears instead natural, inevitable, true. A large part of that comes from the exceptional performances by Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen. They are each able to effectively show a complete range of emotions from terror to joy, ecstasy to pain, love to jealousy, etc. And by playing double duty both as ‘themselves’ and as the image projected by the malevolent entity to the other, their performances are even more impressive. Even secondary characters are provided depth and virtuoso performances that make Leviticus humanly beautiful and honest.
The visual aspect of the film is another strength, from cinematography to production design and editing. They give Leviticus the perfect atmosphere and pacing, much in the way of slow burn small desolate town horror movies of the 1970s. Yet they also crescendo through moments of tense terror into violent frenetic bursts, which (along with the basics of plot) have invited many comparisons to It Follows.
If you haven’t had a chance to see Leviticus yet, do go check it out. The tagline for the movie is: It will never stop. The ambiguity of this is perfect. The supernatural entity will never stop; their feelings will not stop; the transgression seen by segments of society will not stop; their resolve to continue on through the adversity will not stop. Love will not stop.
