You can imagine being a queer teen in a Christian fundamentalist community in rural Australia is not an easy ride. In his debut feature Leviticus, writer and director Adrian Chiarella imagines how much harder that would be if there were also supernatural forces conspiring against you.

The film centres on the burgeoning romance between 17-year-old Naim – played by Joe Bird, who recently impressed in the wonderful Australian horror film Talk to Me (2022) – and Ryan (Stacy Clausen). The pair are forced to attend a fire-and-brimstone sexual conversion therapy session with a fundamentalist “healer” on a mission to convert the town’s gay and lesbian teens.

After sessions with this mysterious figure end in Exorcist-style convulsions and gouts of vomit, participants are pursued by an entity that looks identical to the person they desire most. In classic horror-film fashion, if a teen succumbs to their desire for the lookalike, they are torn to shreds in the midst of sex. Ryan and Naim are caught between their desire for one another and the fact that the person they become intimate with might kill them.

Leviticus is an excellent independent drama. The film’s success lies less in its execution of effective scares and horror tropes........

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