Leviticus

 

Spoiler alert. My first lgbtqia+ movie I'm reviewing.

Leviticus opens like a classic slasher—a gym shower scene where a girl is attacked by an invisible force—before pivoting directly into small-town teenage boyhood: two kids poking a snake with a stick in the woods. Right out of the gate, the film sets an eerie, grounded tone, but it quickly shifts gears into the heavy emotional baggage of closeted youth in a hyper-religious community.

Closet Melodrama & Small-Town Prejudices

The romance dynamics hit all the familiar tropes. We get the abandoned warehouse bravado, heavy lifting, and the inevitable "we must brawl before we admit we love each other" fight-turned-makeout session. Naim and Ryan’s relationship is built on dance-around conversations—symbolized by their secret hangout at the local mill—where neither can bring themselves to ask the direct questions ("Have you been with a guy before?").

Add in church scenes full of stolen glances, casual weed smoking, and heavy-handed religious guilt, and the movie briefly feels like a familiar coming-of-age drama. That is, until Naim gets his heart crushed, panics, and outs Hunter and Ryan.

When the church gets involved, the tone darkens fast. The local priest—complete with unsettling prison tattoos—leads a brutal exorcism narrative. There's a bizarre contrast between the film feeling set in modern times while the community responds with mid-century bigotry (throwing food at a boy just for kissing another guy).

The Lore & Monster Mechanics

Once the horror elements fully kick in, Leviticus shifts into a psychological monster flick. Something supernatural is hunting the boys who went through the exorcism. The entity operates on specific, nightmare-inducing rules:

• Isolation: It only attacks when you are completely alone.

• Doppelgänger Cruelty: It takes the form of the person you love to break your psyche before striking.

Watchers will definitely find themselves screaming at the screen during the mid-section. The character logic is baffling at times—if a creature only attacks when you're alone, sitting by yourself in an empty, unlocked house or expecting a closed bedroom door to hold off a demon feels like a fast track to getting killed.

Yet, the tension delivers. From an intensely unsettling sequence where the creature physically overpowers Naim, to the discovery that the entity is terrified of fire, the third act turns into a desperate survival fight.

The Verdict

Leviticus is a wild ride that balances heavy emotional betrayal—Naim realizing the full extent of his mother's toxic nature and Ryan trying to navigate Naim's mistake—with genuine creature-feature dread. The psychological toll of being hunted by something that wears the face of your first love gives the film a unique edge.

While the middle act suffers from classic horror-movie bad decisions, the film redeems itself where it counts. After standardizing so much pain and trauma throughout its runtime, Leviticus avoids the predictable "bury your gays" tragedy, delivering a deeply satisfying, quiet moment of relief: two boys on a bus, sharing a single pair of earbuds, leaving the nightmare behind.

Rating: 4.5 / 5