Tags
adrian chiarella, ewen leslie, joe bird, leviticus, mia wasikowska, nicholas hope, stacy clausen
“It will never stop.”
Horror has long understood a truth that society frequently struggles to acknowledge: the things we repress rarely disappear. They fester. They mutate. They return to us in unfamiliar forms, demanding recognition.
In Adrian Chiarella’s remarkable Leviticus, repression becomes a monster.
Quite literally.
The premise is deceptively simple. Two teenage boys find themselves pursued by a violent entity capable of assuming the form of the person they desire most — each other. What unfolds from this elegantly terrifying concept is not merely a supernatural chase film, but a deeply affecting exploration of loneliness, internalised shame and the psychological violence inflicted upon those forced to exist on the margins of acceptance.
Like the finest works of queer horror, Leviticus understands that monstrosity often originates not from within, but from without.
The true horror lies in being told that your capacity for love is itself monstrous.
Fear Made Flesh
The genius of Chiarella’s central metaphor lies in its fluidity.
The entity haunting these young men is terrifying not simply because it pursues them relentlessly, but because it embodies contradiction. It is simultaneously desire and destruction, tenderness and violence, attraction and revulsion.
It is love transformed by fear.
Throughout the film, fear functions almost as a transference of trepidation; anxieties long suppressed are projected outward until they assume physical form. The boys are not merely running from an external force. They are running from themselves, from feelings they have been conditioned to distrust and from a society that has taught them to view intimacy through the lens of guilt.
The result is profoundly unsettling.
Every act of tenderness carries the potential for violence.
Every expression of affection risks becoming an act of self-destruction.
The line separating love from hate grows perilously thin.
The Violence of Repression
There is an old adage that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.
Leviticus suggests something more troubling.
That love and hate may, under sufficient pressure, become indistinguishable.
Chiarella deftly explores this uneasy terrain, charting the emotional oscillation between anger and tenderness, longing and resentment, intimacy and aggression. The boys’ relationship exists in a constant state of tension, shaped as much by external hostility as by their own uncertainty.
This emotional volatility gives the film much of its dramatic power.
Heartache becomes inseparable from fear.
Desire becomes inseparable from shame.
The violence that erupts throughout the narrative often feels less like supernatural intervention than the inevitable consequence of prolonged emotional repression.
The monster may be fictional.
The wounds are not.
The Ghosts We Carry
One of Leviticus’ most poignant observations is that trauma, prejudice and hatred are not easily discarded. They do not simply vanish once we recognise them for what they are.
They linger.
They settle into the psyche, quietly shaping our perceptions long after the initial wound has been inflicted.
Chiarella understands that emotional scars possess a troubling afterlife. Years of repression, condemnation and social hostility cannot be shed overnight. Instead, they fester, returning in moments of vulnerability, distorting relationships and poisoning intimacy. Even when love is finally permitted to flourish, the residual weight of shame and fear often remains.
In this sense, the entity pursuing the boys becomes more than a supernatural antagonist. It is the embodiment of accumulated trauma—the manifestation of prejudices both external and internalised. It is the voice that insists happiness is undeserved, that desire is dangerous, that acceptance comes at a cost.
The true tragedy of Leviticus lies in recognising that escaping such horrors is rarely as simple as outrunning them.
Some monsters continue to haunt us long after the chase is over.
Isolation and the Architecture of Anxiety
Perhaps the film’s most devastating achievement is its portrayal of isolation.
Isolation is rarely passive in horror. It distorts perception. It amplifies fear. It transforms private anxieties into all-consuming realities.
In Leviticus, isolation operates on multiple levels.
There is physical isolation — the sense of being cut off from community and safety.
There is emotional isolation — the inability to articulate desire without fear of rejection or reprisal.
And perhaps most painfully, there is existential isolation: the experience of confronting one’s own identity within a world that refuses to acknowledge its legitimacy.
When individuals are denied acceptance, they are often forced into relentless self-examination. Every gesture becomes scrutinised. Every feeling becomes suspect.
The self becomes both sanctuary and prison.
Chiarella captures this experience with remarkable sensitivity.
The film recognises that heightened anxiety is not irrational when the world itself feels hostile.
Religion, Taboo and Collective Fear
The title Leviticus immediately signals the film’s engagement with religious discourse, and Chiarella proves unafraid to confront the destructive intersections of faith, taboo and social conformity.
The film does not indict spirituality itself. Rather, it interrogates the ways religious doctrine can be weaponised by zealotry and group mentality.
Communities built upon exclusion frequently justify themselves through appeals to morality, tradition or divine authority. In doing so, they create environments where difference is not merely discouraged but actively condemned.
Within such spaces, fear becomes communal.
Prejudice becomes ritual.
Cruelty becomes righteousness.
The horror of Leviticus emerges not simply from the supernatural entity stalking its protagonists, but from the social structures that made such a monster possible in the first place.
The creature is merely the symptom.
The disease is intolerance.
A Timely Voice in Contemporary Horror
With Leviticus, Adrian Chiarella joins a growing lineage of filmmakers using horror as a vehicle for examining contemporary social anxieties through distinctly queer perspectives.
Yet the film never feels didactic.
Its themes emerge organically through character, atmosphere and metaphor rather than overt polemic. Chiarella trusts audiences to navigate ambiguity, allowing emotional truths to surface gradually through moments of vulnerability, terror and unexpected tenderness.
This restraint proves crucial.
For all its darkness, Leviticus remains deeply compassionate.
It understands that confronting oneself can be frightening.
It also understands that self-acceptance may be the only means of surviving.
The Prognosis:
Leviticus is an intelligent, emotionally resonant and deeply topical work of queer horror that transforms supernatural terror into a poignant meditation on repression, loneliness and the enduring struggle for acceptance.
Anchored by Adrian Chiarella’s assured direction and a powerful central metaphor, the film explores the fragile boundary between love and hate, fear and desire, violence and tenderness with rare nuance.
Chiarella reminds us that trauma, prejudice and hatred are not easily shed. They linger, fester and leave scars upon the psyche, shaping the way we love, fear and ultimately understand ourselves.
In a world that too often demands conformity, Leviticus asks a simple but devastating question:
What happens when society teaches us to fear the very people we love — and, ultimately, ourselves?
The answer is horrifying.
And heartbreakingly human.
- Saul Muerte
Surgeons of Horror 