REVIEW

‘LEVITICUS’ Is Australia’s Queer Riff on ‘It Follows’

By Matt Oakes · June 15, 2026

I’ll be honest: I had to look up the biblical significance of the word Leviticus. While I knew it carried religious connotations, I couldn’t have told you much beyond that. For my fellow heathens out there, the Book of Leviticus is largely concerned with ideas of purity, impurity, sacrifice, sin, and atonement – all concepts that run throughout writer-director Adrian Chiarella’s debut feature.

A queer coming-of-age horror film that openly draws inspiration from David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, Leviticus explores the horrors of conversion therapy through the story of two young gay men cursed by their tyrannically religious small town and stalked by a malevolent force that takes the form of one another. The result is a frequently chilling horror movie with actual thematic substance, one that cares as much about the inner lives of its characters as it does its scares.

Naim (Joe Bird) has recently relocated with his devout single mother (Mia Wasikowska) following a family tragedy. Their destination is a bleak Australian town where church attendance isn’t simply encouraged, it’s practically mandatory. When Naim begins a secret relationship with local boy Ryan (Stacy Clausen), the pair know their feelings for one another wouldn’t be met with anything resembling acceptance.

Things go sideways after Naim, acting out of jealousy, reveals one of Ryan’s encounters with another boy to their unsuspecting families. What follows is a kind of homosexual exorcism intended to purge the boys of their same-sex desires. Instead, it leaves them cursed. Now stalked by a malevolent force that only they can see, the entity takes the form of whoever they are most attracted to. Soon, Naim is also stricken. His demon looks like Ryan. Ryan’s looks like him.

Although the setup bears more than a passing resemblance to It Follows – a sexually charged supernatural curse, an invisible threat visible only to the afflicted, and a horror story rooted in adolescent desire – Chiarella wisely remixes the rest of Mitchell’s horror formula to his own effect. Through a combination of effective jump scares, mounting dread, and a LGBTQ metaphor that feels deeply personal to the filmmaker, Leviticus quickly establishes its own identity.

What elevates the film beyond homage is the emotional core at its center. Beneath the supernatural horror lies a surprisingly affecting romance between Naim and Ryan, two boys forced to navigate both their feelings for one another and the suffocating judgment of the community around them. Chiarella asks a genuinely unsettling question: what if the person you loved most in the world looked just like the thing trying to kill you?

That tension gives the film a psychological dimension that many horror movies lack. The force pursuing the boys isn’t simply an external threat. It’s a manifestation of shame, fear, desire, and religious trauma all wrapped up with one tidy, murderous bow.

More importantly, Leviticus understands the genuine horror underlying its metaphor. Conversion therapy isn’t some relic of the distant past. Research has repeatedly linked the practice to dramatically increased rates of depression, self-harm, and suicide among LGBTQ youth. The film taps directly into that reality. One particularly devastating exchange finds Naim confronting his mother about the ritual performed on him. Her response makes it clear that fear – not love – must be the organizing principle of her parenting. It’s a chilling reminder of how religious doctrine can sometimes override the instincts parents are imbued with to protect their children no matter the cost. The lord works in mysterious ways, or whatever.

Wasikowska makes the most of limited screen time as Naim’s mother, bringing an mousey stillness to the role. She’s never overtly cruel or villainous. If anything, that’s what makes her unknowable, unsettling. Wasikowska embodies the kind of unwavering religious certainty that allows otherwise loving people to participate in harmful acts while believing they’re doing the right thing.

At a lean eighty-five minutes, Leviticus moves quickly, delivering a horror film that is entertaining and purposeful in equal measure. Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen anchor the movie with strong performances and believable chemistry, giving emotional weight to a story that could have easily become overwhelmed by its metaphor. Clausen, in particular, faces the challenge of portraying both Ryan and the demonic version of Ryan, modulating between the subtle distinctions of the two, which for its sake is one of the film’s most effective tools. Chiarella frequently stages scenes where audiences aren’t immediately sure which version they’re watching until a sudden act of malice reveals the bloody truth. It’s a clever, unsettling device that speaks both to the horror of the situation and the desires driving the characters.

What ultimately makes Leviticus work is that its horror never feels detached from the people at its center. The scares land, the atmosphere is effective, and Chiarella stages several genuinely unnerving sequences, but the film understands that the real terror isn’t being hunted by a supernatural force. It’s being taught that a fundamental part of yourself is something that needs to be fixed. By grounding its horror in that emotional reality, Chiarella delivers a debut that’s as thoughtful as it is unsettling.

Leviticus may wear its influences on its sleeve, but it pairs its scares with enough emotional honesty and thematic weight to stand comfortably on its own. Equal parts queer romance, supernatural horror, and condemnation of conversion therapy, it’s a smart, effective debut that understands monsters are often most terrifying when they resemble the people we love.

CONCLUSION: Adrian Chiarella’s ‘Leviticus’ transforms the horrors of conversion therapy into a chilling supernatural nightmare with genuine emotional weight. While its ‘It Follows’ influences are impossible to miss, this queer coming-of-age horror story finds plenty of frightening and heartbreaking territory to call its own.