"Leviticus"

 ☆☆☆½

Leviticus continues the 2026 horror-movie trend of positing the notion that the greatest horror in the world isn't a monster or the devil or the physical world but rather ourselves and the way others respond to us. Like Obsession (a man's wish undoes him), Exit 8 (a man's inability to commit traps him) and Backrooms (a man gets lost in his own mind), Leviticus proceeds from the idea that a person's very nature can be turned against them.

This time, it's not one person at the core of the story but two—Naim and Ryan, two teenagers living in a bleak part of rural Australia. Naim (Joe Bird) is there because his mother has relocated them to a community more in keeping with her conservative Christian values. Naim meets Ryan (Stacy Clausen), and as the film begins the two boys are discovering their mutual attraction.

For Naim, it's more than physical. He grows deeply attached to Ryan, but Ryan may not quite feel the same way: Naim catches him with Hunter (Jeremy Blewitt), and out of anger and jealousy tells Hunter's parents about the boys.

Following a strange and bloody introduction that, for a long time, seems untethered to the rest of the film, Leviticus does not show itself as a horror movie. It's an uncommonly sensitive portrayal of two boys trying to cope with their homosexuality and their attraction despite their oppressive environment. Only when Naim is dragged to a bizarre religious ceremony conducted by a "deliverance healer" does something very strange begin happening.

Exactly how that works is a plot point I wouldn't dream of revealing, and it's the movie's most worthwhile idea. Writer-director Adrian Chiarella hits a nerve with his central conceit, and though it takes a little time to figure out exactly what's going on, when it all comes clear the consequences are genuinely terrifying.

What the parents of the community, including Naim's mother (Mia Wasikowska), choose to do to their kids is horrifying and painful to watch—often too much so. Leviticus revels just a little too much in gore, which increases as the movie goes on. It becomes a physically brutal film, but thanks to the earnest and believable performances by Bird and Clausen, it never loses touch with its humanity.

The movie gets a little tripped up by the "rules" of what's happening. They aren't numerous, but they're so specific that even as allegorical horror the movie starts straining credulity. It's likewise a bit of an overreach to create a character so unrelievedly awful as Wasikowska's mother. All the parents in this movie are terrible people, yet Leviticus never spends a moment considering why the community has oriented itself around such a specific hatred, or what the religious implications are. The ceremony that pushes the film into horror is never really explained, nor are its roots in Christianity.

Maybe because of the uncommonly good ways in which it shows two boys in love, struggling against community values that oppose them, the horror sometimes feels a little too forced. And yet, the love and attraction they portray is authentic, and in one pivotal, wordless scene on a bus, exquisitely, achingly believable.

Leviticus is a movie with a lot of ideas at its core. Not all of them are presented well, but the ones that are make this a cut above most horror films that is almost destined to become a queer classic.

Viewed June 20, 2026 — Regal Sherman Oaks

1745