Leviticus (2026) attempts to weave together a complex tapestry of themes, queer desire, religious condemnation, and supernatural horror within the Australian landscape. While ambitious in scope, the execution reveals a work where compelling elements struggle to cohere into a unified vision.
Naim (Joe Bird) and his mother have moved to a small, religious town in rural Australia following the loss of his father. Naim is on the quieter side, and he’s afraid of many things. A snake, a frog, even of himself and how he feels. There’s a budding friendship with ’s character, Ryan (Stacey Clausen), that is aching to become more. It’s growing outside of the school grounds, away from watching eyes, where what they really want can be shown.
The level of sweetness between them carries the film powerfully, until the central conflict. Driven by jealousy, sadness, confusion, an act of impulsive betrayal sets in motion for the real horror to begin.
The parents, through a preacher, are set to keep them apart through fear. Where deviation means death. A nod to conversion therapy with a layer of supernatural violence.
The film continually plays with evocative, comparative motifs. There’s skulls that look uncannily like electrical wiring. There are snakes and frogs carrying obvious biblical weight. There's dissection imagery, bodies opened up, examined, laid bare.
The outback is present and alive in the film, broad and sprawling, but it never tips into the kind of tourist-brochure Australiana that overtones so many local productions. It isn’t so specific that the setting quite becomes another character, but there is a real sense of the smallness of this kind of dusty town, of the listlessness of the distance between the boy’s lives and somewhere else. There's ‘Australian’ humor in there too, and crucially, it never feels kitschy. The humor just feels real, like the kind of jokes these characters would actually make.
The writing does well to allow the young cast to talk like actual boys. Real language, real dynamics. That authenticity really carries. As does Stacey Clausen’s performance: He fully embodies this kid, with his confidence in seeking out Naim in the beginning, and his heartache through the consequences that are to come portrayed with a perfect balance of laconic Australian stereotype.
Composer Jed Kurzel avoids the traditional route of a sweeping score, instead leaning into tones. Just tones. It works surprisingly well at building dread. There are these light, almost intimate sonic touches in quiet moments, that suddenly get shattered by something so jarring and aggressive. You're leaning in one second, flinching the next.
It's no surprise, really, horror is often more about what you hear than what you see, and Leviticus seems to understand that instinctively. Those reverberant moments that mark something supernatural or sinister? They do a lot of heavy lifting. The sound is doing the work that exposition should be doing but doesn't quite make it.
At its core Leviticus looks to personify how religion uses fear to control people, to keep desires at bay or punish those who don’t. Assumedly the title is taken from the book of Leviticus 18:22, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination." The framework hanging over everything.
They want you to keep these secrets, keep them quiet, never be loud and proud. In a way this is how homosexuality is depicted in the film itself. No character ever outright says gay, queer, or any term for sexual identity in the slightest. Everything lives in behavior and subtext. This could be read as authentic to the world these characters inhabit, or as a kind of hedging by the filmmaker. It’s arguably not necessary for identities to be spoken, though conversely you could see this as leaning into the living of lies.
There are elements of queer joy speckled throughout. The anticipation of a first kiss, the unbridled thrill of your crush actually crushing on you in return to lure you in to feel as our characters are.
But there is a more direct set of the parallels between sin and punishment, religious prohibition and visceral fear, within the film’s horror aspect..
The visual aspects of the film set it to be in the vaguely modern day but the direction of the religious homophobia ages the film back. It’s very old school. As does the treatment of male sexuality, specifically, the way aggressive male energy bleeds into sexual desire. The fear, the shame, the violence, even in supposedly positive situations. It reads as somewhat retrograde; is the film interrogating this or just reproducing it?
Take the opening shot of a hyper sexualized, gruesome death. On its own it’s striking, sure, but it doesn't actually align with the film that follows. It sets up a tone the rest of the movie doesn't sustain or earn.
Then there's the issue of character motivation. Quite a few scenes feel like characters are placed somewhere because the script needs them there, not because it makes sense for who they are in that moment. Repeatedly. And it starts to erode your trust in the storytelling.
Midway through we come to understand that Naim likes to watch. He's an observer, an outsider. But had the film actually set that up properly at the start, his poking around would feel earned. Instead, it feels convenient, like the scaffolding of the story is showing.
The film is slightly clumsy in that it doesn't quite follow the rules it establishes for its characters and its world. And in horror that really matters, if you set up a logic, you need to honor it or your audience can just end up confused.
There's a lack of mystery that could have taken the audience further. The horror isn't ineffective, exactly, but it doesn't feel necessarily twinned with the narrative.
In all honesty, you could retool this into a film about the religious prohibition of "no sex before marriage" and the bones would hold. The queer-specific elements add texture but not structural necessity, which raises the question of whether they're truly integrated or just decorative.
And here's the thing - you can make a film that spells everything out and still have it feel anticipatory and exciting. Clarity isn't the enemy of tension. But Leviticus sits in this awkward middle ground, not opaque enough to feel mysterious, not clear enough to feel deliberate.
It's possible that high expectations clouded our viewing. We've seen films tackle queer horror brilliantly, and maybe we brought that baggage into Leviticus expecting something it was never trying to be. There is grace worth extending here.
Writer and Director Adrian Chiarella’s instincts and ambition are present but it’s almost like they’re waiting in the wings.