The horror movie Leviticus makes no overt reference to the Book of Leviticus. I dare say that gay readers are more familiar with the third book of the Old Testament than most Christians of any stripe. The relevant passage in the book says pretty unambiguously that male homosexuality is wrong, but the movie appears to have taken inspiration from other parts of the book mandating extravagant punishments for other crimes like blasphemy, idol worship, tearing one’s clothes, and failing to stand in the presence of old people.
In doing so, this Australian spawn of Heavenly Creatures and It Follows portrays the trauma of gay conversion therapy better than any movie before it, and also winds up being an unexpectedly powerful romance. In this summer that has given us a bumper crop of well-crafted, zeitgeisty horror flicks, those are singular achievements.
Joe Bird plays a small, thin high-school kid named Naim, who has just moved along with his recently widowed mother (Mia Wasikowska) to a particularly depressing industrial town Down Under. He’s already having sex with a popular, athletic boy named Ryan (Stacy Clausen) as we start, before he catches Ryan making out with Hunter (Jeremy Blewitt), the son of the local fundamentalist preacher (Ewen Leslie). Vindictively, Naim snitches on the two boys to Hunter’s dad, who calls in a wizened old clergyman (Nicholas Hope) to perform a cleansing ritual on Ryan and Hunter. The two boys clearly regard the ceremony as a joke, right up until they both start choking and experiencing full-body convulsions on the floor.
Valuable background information is filled in by Jessica (Shannon Berry), a lesbian who had the same ritual performed on her and her girlfriend. She now camps out at the local hospital so that she’ll never be prey to the monster, which only attacks people who are alone. Much like the demon in It Follows, the entity pursuing them is invisible to most people and can shape-shift into the likeness of anyone, so it impersonates both Naim and Ryan to each other. This laces all the romantic scenes with a clammy dread, since there’s no way to tell when either kid will suddenly try to kill the other in the middle of sex or a casual conversation.
That dread comes with a boatload of guilt and internalized homophobia. Naim witnesses the purification ceremony and is horrorstruck by what he’s brought on Ryan and Hunter, and even more so when he sees the invisible thing strangle and decapitate Hunter outside a deserted gas station. Hunter’s father presides over the funeral of his son’s mangled corpse and is so shattered that he abandons his faith and family. Not so remorseful is Naim’s mother, who hands her son over to ministers for the same ritual, and when Naim later tells her that he’s now scared all the time, she says, “Fear is good! It’s what keeps us alive!” Every time our teens try to explain what is happening, the people around them accuse them of making it all up and treat them like they’re the problem.
First-time feature filmmaker Adrian Chiarella, a Melbourne native of Chinese and Italian heritage, has some visual chops to go with his storytelling nous. A prime example is the opening segment at a public swimming pool where Jessica’s girlfriend (Tyallah Bullock) is showering alone — a wall in front of the shower entrance conceals her naked body and also prevents us from seeing the thing that attacks and brutally murders her. That shot is then cleverly mirrored in the climactic sequence, as Naim tries to escape the demon that now looks like Ryan.
The demon whose purpose is to drive wedges between gay couples and make them afraid of each other is a handy metaphor for gay conversion therapy. That lands happily during this Pride Month, when the federal and state governments are actively pushing this ineffective and destructive form of quack psychology disguised as religious freedom to make LGBT people hate themselves. The final shot of Leviticus is oddly similar to It Follows’, and I read both of them as hopeful. Our couples are going to try to be happy even though the monster (a stand-in for the trauma they’ve endured) will keep following them for the rest of their lives. It is where those horror movies’ greatness resides.
Leviticus
Starring Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen. Written and directed by Adrian Chiarella. Rated R.
