Two teenage boys must escape a violent entity that takes the form of the person they desire most - each other.
The Garden Cinema View:
Adrian Chiarella’s feature debut slots into a demonic legacy of modern Australian horror that includes the Philippou brothers (Talk To Me, Bring Her Back), Relic, and The Babadook. Leviticus makes explicit the queer undertones of the genre, turning homophobia into an intense, emotional, and violent haunting. Riffing on It Follows and The Terminator (with perhaps a nod to Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing) Chiarella presents ideas of identity crisis, religious oppression, and domestic abuse. But such is the films tremendous momentum – and lean running time – that there isn’t too much space to indulge these deeper themes. Instead we’re left with this exponentially terrifying and paranoid ordeal amongst the deserted suburbs and towering industrial sites of Victoria state.
