Critic Reviews

This outstanding debut from writer-director Adrian Chiarella organically marries blood-curdling fright with incisive social commentary.

Leviticus announces Adrian Chiarella as a filmmaker of remarkable confidence and control. It's a horror film that trusts its audience, trusts its characters, and trusts the power of what remains unseen. In doing so, it becomes one of the year's most unsettling — and impressive — genre debuts.

There have been plenty of horror movies about conversion therapy, but none like this one. Though it is at times terrifying, capturing the isolation of the queer experience with bone-deep emotion, the first-time director's new film is a surprisingly tender look at the shapes love and demons can take.

At its heart, the film is a love story. A love story about two souls who need to trust each other if they want to survive.

Chiarella has a skill for creating scares beyond the obvious, but Leviticus (which takes its name from the biblical verse often used against homosexuality) gains a massive jolt from a near-perfect melding of theme and concept.

The Book of Leviticus is one of rules and wrath, demanding a high specificity to purity in order to live according to God’s ethical standards. Recently, the Book has become a pick and choose index of Old Testament codes that religious zealots use to condemn others, namely the homophobic interpretations of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. For his feature debut, writer-director Chiarella has sharply crafted an empathetic and inventive rebuttal to the distortions of the text with an added spin that highlights the destructive, inhumane effects of conversion therapy.

This movie’s nail-biting, sorrowful power comes from what internalized destruction looks like.

Striking performances from young leads Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen also give the film an undeniable power.

Chiarella’s pro-queer filmmaking extends to his ability to perfectly capture the fumbling ecstasy of new love, the fierce longing of stolen kisses and how scary it is to submit to a new partner. Kudos to Bird and Clausen for capturing that universal feeling.

Leviticus is the most haunting love story to hit theaters in a long while. It’s also an effective horror movie, which makes writer-director Adrian Chiarella’s successful balancing act all the more impressive.