What if the object of your desire was also the thing trying to kill you? Not in the slow, grinding way that bad relationships destroy you over years. In the active, physical, hands-around-your-throat way. That is the premise of Leviticus, and it is one of the most disturbing and emotionally intelligent ideas in recent horror memory.
Writer-director Adrian Chiarella named his debut feature after the book of the Old Testament most frequently weaponized against queer people, and that choice tells you everything about what he intends to do with it. This is not a horror film that happens to have queer characters. It is a horror film built from the specific terror of being told that who you are is wrong, and what happens when that terror is made literal and set loose in the world.
The Story
Naim, played by Joe Bird, and Ryan, played by newcomer Stacy Clausen, are two young men in a blue-collar Australian town who are slowly, fumblingly, beautifully falling for each other. Chiarella captures that particular feeling of new desire with remarkable precision. Wrestling becomes flirtation. Flirtation becomes longing. Longing becomes tenderness. It is universal and specific at the same time, and Bird and Clausen are extraordinary in these moments.
It does not go over well. The town has a Christian pastor with a deliverance healer on staff who prefers his flock considerably more heterosexual. When the boys are subjected to so-called conversion therapy, a scientifically discredited practice that has been condemned by every major medical organization on the planet, something is unleashed. A demon that takes the form of your crush. One that has weaponized lust itself.
Chiarella is working with a simple but devastating idea: sexual desire makes you vulnerable, and repressing who you are causes real damage. In Leviticus, that damage takes a physical, monstrous form. The boys literally cannot be near each other without risking their lives. You shouldn’t be near me, one says to the other. I shouldn’t be near you either.
The Filmmaking
Chiarella announces himself immediately as someone who knows his genre history. The film opens with a shower scene that nods directly to Hitchcock’s Psycho, and references to A Nightmare on Elm Street run through the DNA of the whole thing. Some comparisons to It Follows and Heated Rivalry have circulated, and while you can see where they come from, they undersell what Chiarella is actually doing. This film has its own vision.
His pacing is flawless. The build of dread is patient and sure, never rushing toward the scares before the emotional groundwork is firmly in place. Some of his visual choices are more on the nose than others, a frog being eaten by a snake reads a little literal, but those minor missteps do not slow the film down. When the terror arrives it lands with genuine force because you have already been made to care deeply about these two people.
The soundtrack deserves its own mention. Frank Ocean gave the filmmakers the right to use Self Control, and its placement in the film is one of the more affecting musical moments in recent cinema. Ocean’s music understands longing and the cost of suppressing it in a way that makes it the perfect emotional counterpart to what Chiarella is doing visually.
The Real Monsters
The demon is terrifying. But Chiarella is clear-eyed about where the actual horror lives in this story. The real monsters are the adults: the parents, the caregivers, the community members who turn on two scared young men and make them afraid of each other and of themselves. A mother who would gently remove unwanted olives from her son’s pizza but cannot accept seeing him kiss another boy. That image carries more weight than any supernatural sequence in the film.
Leviticus joins Obsession and Backrooms in what has been a genuinely remarkable summer for horror in 2026, and it is the best of the three. Chiarella, at the start of his career, is already working at a level that most filmmakers never reach.
The Verdict
Leviticus is a masterpiece of modern horror. It is deeply scary, emotionally devastating, and one of the most urgent and necessary pieces of queer filmmaking in years. Joe Bird, already a breakout from A24’s Talk to Me, cements himself here as one of the most compelling young actors working today, and Stacy Clausen more than holds his own beside him. Adrian Chiarella has made something that will be talked about for a long time.
See it immediately.
Leviticus is now playing in theaters. Rated R. A Neon release. Directed by Adrian Chiarella. Runtime: 88 minutes.
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