"Leviticus" Turns Conversion Therapy into a Living Nighmare

When a church tries to “pray away the gay” from two teenage boys, it unleashes a monstrous supernatural entity that terrorizes them in this masterfully grim new entry into the genre of queer horror.

Horror has deep roots in the queer experience, all the way back to the 1930s and movies like Frankenstein and Dracula, in which the “monsters” became metaphors for outsiders and other-ness, creatures who can’t help the way they are. Now, in the modern era, horror “speaks” to LGBTQ viewers in multiple ways as victims of a society that often rejects them, treats them as freakish abominations and even tries to change their sexual orientation to align with conservative religious edicts.

The movie’s title refers to an Old Testament book with a passage that condemns homosexual relations, one that many modern scholars argue has been widely—and woefully—misinterpreted.

Related: ‘Queer’ Has Changed Meanings a Few Times—Here’s What It Means Now and How It’s Used

Director Adrian Chiarella makes a most impressive feature-film debut with this effectively unsettling coming-of-age story about high schoolers Niam (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen), whose roughhousing leads to more intimate encounters. When the pastor at their church—in their backwater Australian town—finds out, he hires a “deliverance healer” (Nicholas Hope) to convert them.

But the tortuous “conversion” has horrifying consequences, as Niam and Ryan each become stalked and victimized by something only visible to them, something that takes the form of what they each want most in the world—each other. And it’s trying to kill them.

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Leviticus is rich in symbolism and allegory, like when Niam and Ryan watch a snake devouring a rat, in a scene that opens with an antelope skull perched on a fence post beneath a field of buzzing transmission towers. That imagery sets up the story about a dreary, hopeless world that wants to destroy them, one whirring with hate and loathing. And the many shots of their drab, decaying little town—with abandoned sweatshops and factory smokestacks belching into the sky—suggest that the piety of their community church, in the shadow of shabby modernity, is similarly outdated and noxious.

Mia Wasikowska (from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and Guillermo del Toro’s Twin Peaks) plays Niam’s stern church-going mom, who doesn’t exactly sympathize with his plight, even when she becomes aware of the curse that’s been unleashed on him. “We need fear,” she dismissively tells him. “It’s how we survive.”

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Speaking of fear, there are a couple of “gotcha” jump-scare jolts and a bit of body horror, but mostly this is a movie that conveys the dread, the chill, the stifling fear of not knowing when the next attack is coming. (And that itself might be especially resonant with gay viewers who feel the same anxieties in their own lives.)

Repeated scenes of the boys throwing rocks at each other, a macho exercise in who can stand the most pain, is a reminder of the abuse that homosexuals still face around the world, where same-sex activity can be punishable by death.

The “monsters” of Leviticus might remind you of It Follows, the acclaimed 2014 horror film about a stalking menace that could look like anyone—and then tear you to pieces. But there’s a sweet intimacy too, in scenes where Niam and Ryan find their bliss, canoodling and caressing. Can they, and their relationship, survive the weight of the forces now unleashed against them?

Leviticus takes a Bible verse, guts it and spins it into a resonant, richly relevant tale of forbidden love—and a crushing indictment of weaponizing some harsh ancient words against anyone following what their hearts truly want.

FINAL THOUGHTS:A timely tale that’s both tender and terrifying

Rated R

In theaters Friday, June 19

Expected to arrive on streaming services in 45 to 60 days.

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