‘Leviticus’ Is the Best Romance Movie of the Summer, Horror & All
What To Know
- Leviticus is a queer horror film that was released on June 19.
- The film stars Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen.
- The movie centers on the tender, intimate love story between two boys, Naim and Ryan, set against the backdrop of a repressive, religious Australian town.
More than a few times in Neon’s new thriller Leviticus, Naim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen) have their fingers in each other’s hair. They can’t help it. It’s intoxicating just how sensual and untamed you can feel running your fingers through your partner’s hair as you succumb to their kiss or fall into their arms. It’s so overwhelming that it can blot out the world around you and ward off anything prying into that moment, even a malicious entity hellbent on ripping you from it and then ripping you apart.
For Naim and Ryan, it first happens in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of their deeply religious town of Victoria, Australia, where they seek momentary refuge away from a world they know doesn’t accept them. There, they roughhouse, they tease, they flirt, and they eventually kiss, a curious and timid and then all-consuming first embrace. Naim’s fingers immediately run through Ryan’s wild, bleached-blond curls. When they roll over, it’s Ryan’s hands on the back of Naim’s neck, moving with no hesitation to confidently explore his own messy mop.
Courtesy of NEON
Watching two boys kiss has never been more popular, given the recent success of shows like Heated Rivalry and The Vampire Lestat. It’s nothing new by any means, even if it is scandalous in Victoria’s repressed community. And it instantly works here because of Bird and Clausen’s intense chemistry. But the kiss is not what writer/director Adrian Chiarella trains his camera on. He finds their fingers tangled in the strands of the other’s hair. He traces that electric point of touch.
Chiarella needs the audience to feel it, as if it’s on their own skin, because that’s what is going to anchor Naim and Ryan when their worst fears come true. When the only thing that can tell good from evil is the truth of that touch, the truth of that sensation. It’s also why the best way for this haunting entity to fool these boys into its trap is to try to emulate the undeniable truth of touch between two people. Once you feel it, it’s hard to deny it, even when indulging in it could mean death.
Leviticus is the most romantic movie of the summer for that reason. It’s a horror movie, yes, but it is also a heart-pounding experience that manages to make the loss of this young love feel more dire than the loss of these two boys’ lives. But isn’t that young love, after all? So potent, so stirring, so enveloping that it feels like life would cease to exist if it were taken from you.
It is also crucially important that this is a queer text, specifically. At a moment in popular culture when movies and shows with boys kissing get so much attention for the sheer spectacle of it (see the titles mentioned above), this film makes the case that its love story isn’t for the benefit of the masses. While horror (and the fears it provokes) is universal, the intimacy between Naim and Ryan is for them. And for the queer audiences who know both the thrill of youthful passion born out of a shared and reciprocated secret, and the sting of the isolation that can be born from indulging in it. It is a duality that many within the queer community know too well in towns like Victoria and families like Naim and Ryan’s.
But within the horror of this film are some intoxicatingly beautiful and subtle declarations of love that will stick with you longer than the jump scares. The first is made clear after Ryan and Hunter (Jeremy Blewitt) are subjected to a cursed conversation ritual by the religious dealer of their so-called deliverance, courtesy of their ignorant parents. Their new unseen, unrelenting stalker takes the form of what they desire most. For Hunter, that is Ryan. But for Ryan, it is Naim. If you can ignore the terror of their increasingly grim circumstance for a second, that is one hell of a way to confirm someone’s interest in you. In a way, this evil proves to Naim what anyone would want in a relationship — to know your loved one is just as into you as you are into them. Naim’s eventual dark passenger taking the form of Ryan just solidifies it.
Courtesy of NEON
Then, after recognizing the dire state of their lives, Ryan dissuades Naim’s plans to run away by dropping this knee-buckling profession: “If I’m going to live with this thing, I don’t want it to look like some other dickhead. I want it to look like you.” If you aren’t saying stuff like this to your partner (maybe with more refined language), it’s time to reevaluate things.
In the dark, violent fog of this film, the only thing that feels more compelling is the evolution of these acknowledgments of a shared desire. Initially, their connection is hidden away from prying, prejudiced eyes in that derelict warehouse. Not for nothing, when the entity attacks Naim there later in the film, the only thing that stops its wrath cold in its tracks is Naim touching Ryan’s cheek, that irrefutable form of connection they first shared on that very floor.
In time, their connection is put on display for everyone to see on the Australian version of a Greyhound bus. Cozied up in the back, they engage in a particularly rousing (and not very quiet) sexual act before nuzzling into each other for the ride back home to the next nightmare. By the end of the film, though, they are back on a bus out of town, this time for good, now wrapped in each other at the front of the bus without fear of who is watching. It puts horror and love into perspective. What’s a few judging looks from strangers when the alternative is certain death?
This town, and by extension the evil force they beseeched on their sons, wanted these boys to fear the very thing they find comfort and protection in — connection. It’s core to their relationship and, despite everyone’s best efforts to isolate them into submission, it remains the grounding force that keeps them going. Stronger together. If you find a message more powerful and vitally timely than that in your summer movie this year, let us know.
Leviticus, In Theaters
