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The easiest explanation for why Leviticus has been so well received is also the least interesting one: it has a strong horror premise. Two teenage boys are threatened by an entity that can take the form of the person they desire most — which, in their case, means each other.
But a good premise alone does not explain the enthusiasm surrounding Adrian Chiarella’s feature debut. What makes Leviticus more effective is that its monster, its romance, and its central ideas are not three separate parts of the film. They all operate through the same dramatic mechanism.
The person who offers safety can also become the thing you fear. Attraction creates vulnerability. Isolation makes certainty almost impossible. And a supernatural threat transforms an intimate question — “Can I trust the person in front of me?” — into a matter of survival.
The monster is also the central idea
Many horror films contain a metaphor. Fewer build the rules of the horror around that metaphor.
In Leviticus, desire itself creates uncertainty. The creature does not simply chase the characters while the film discusses shame, repression, religion, and sexuality in separate dramatic scenes. It uses attraction as camouflage.
That distinction matters. If the threat can appear as the person you most want to approach, then intimacy becomes dangerous without intimacy itself being presented as evil. The horror comes from a system that has turned desire against the person experiencing it.
This gives the supernatural concept several functions at once. It can produce suspense, interfere with relationships, visualize internal fear, and create situations in which neither the character nor the viewer can immediately trust what they see.
That economy is one of the film’s greatest strengths. The monster does not interrupt the story to provide horror. The monster is the story’s emotional conflict given physical form.
The romance is not something the horror pauses for
Another reason critics have responded strongly to Leviticus is that the relationship between Naim and Ryan is structurally important rather than decorative.
Remove the romance and the supernatural concept loses much of its force. The entity is frightening precisely because the boys want to be close to each other. Every moment of affection therefore creates two conflicting impulses: move closer and remain suspicious.
Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen have repeatedly been singled out in the film’s reception because that mechanism requires convincing chemistry. If the audience does not care whether these two people can trust one another, the monster becomes little more than a clever trick.
Their relationship gives the threat a cost beyond death. Survival may require distance from exactly the person capable of making survival emotionally bearable.
That is a much more uncomfortable problem than simply asking whether a monster can be defeated.
Why the It Follows comparison makes sense — up to a point
The comparison between Leviticus and It Follows is almost unavoidable. Both films turn an apparently simple supernatural rule into sustained paranoia. A human-looking presence approaches, certainty becomes difficult, and ordinary spaces become threatening because danger no longer needs to announce itself.
But treating Leviticus merely as another version of that film misses an important difference.
The threat in Leviticus is specifically interested in recognition. It weaponizes a face the victim wants to see. The question is not only whether something is approaching, but whether affection itself can still be trusted.
That changes the emotional geometry of the scenes. The safest response to an unknown figure might be obvious. The safest response to someone who looks exactly like the person you love is far less certain.
Its social commentary changes how the horror functions
Leviticus is frequently described in relation to conversion therapy, religious repression, and homophobia. Those readings are understandable, but reducing the film to a single one-to-one allegory can make its horror less interesting than it actually is.
Chiarella has discussed the supernatural threat in broader terms, connecting it to coercive systems that attempt to control young people while they are discovering who they are. The distinction is useful because it prevents every element of the creature from needing a perfectly literal symbolic equivalent.
The film can therefore operate on more than one level. The entity can evoke institutional control, shame imposed by others, internalized fear, or the consequences of being taught that a fundamental part of yourself is dangerous.
The most effective social horror does not merely tell the audience what an injustice represents. It changes the conditions under which characters must act. Leviticus does exactly that: fear alters who can be approached, who can be trusted, and whether being alone is safer than being together.
The title carries more weight than a biblical reference
The title Leviticus naturally evokes the biblical book whose verses have often appeared in religious arguments concerning homosexuality. But the title also prepares the viewer for a story obsessed with rules: rules about purity, desire, acceptable behavior, punishment, and what supposedly happens when those boundaries are crossed.
Horror frequently begins with a transgression. Someone enters the forbidden room. Someone repeats the ritual. Someone violates the rule.
Leviticus complicates that structure by asking who created the rule in the first place. If a community defines desire as the transgression, then the traditional logic of supernatural punishment becomes morally unstable.
The frightening question stops being “What did these characters do wrong?” and becomes “Why were they taught that something was wrong with them?”
The setting makes ordinary life feel hostile
The film also benefits from resisting the temptation to make every image overtly supernatural.
Its Australian industrial and rural spaces often feel depleted rather than fantastical. Roads, buildings, open land, church spaces, and institutional interiors become environments where there seems to be plenty of physical space but very little room to escape social scrutiny.
Chiarella has described an interest in contrasting what is man-made with what seems to come from something larger and less controllable. That visual idea suits the film particularly well. Human beings construct rules, institutions, rituals, and expectations; something much harder to contain emerges from the consequences.
The environment therefore does not merely provide a gloomy background. It reinforces isolation before the supernatural threat even needs to appear.
Leviticus understands that recognition can be frightening
One of horror’s most reliable techniques is to make something unfamiliar appear inside a familiar space. Leviticus reverses that process.
It makes familiarity itself suspicious.
A stranger approaching in the darkness is easy to classify as a possible threat. A familiar face is more complicated. Recognition normally reduces uncertainty: we know this person, therefore we understand what we are seeing.
The creature destroys that shortcut.
Once recognition can no longer be trusted, every reunion carries a small possibility of catastrophe. This is where the film moves beyond the mechanics of a pursuing monster and into something closer to psychological horror: perception itself becomes unreliable without requiring the protagonist to be delusional.
Why some viewers are less convinced
The strong critical reception should not be mistaken for universal agreement.
One criticism is almost the reverse of the film’s greatest strength: because the monster works so clearly as an expression of repression and coercion, some viewers may feel the thematic meaning is too visible. What feels precise to one viewer may feel overly explicit to another.
Others are likely to be more interested in the supernatural rules themselves and may want answers the film is less interested in providing. What exactly can the entity do? Where are the absolute boundaries? How consistently can its behavior be mapped?
Those are legitimate questions, but they reveal an important divide in how horror is watched. Some viewers approach a supernatural story as a system to be understood. Others are satisfied when the rules are clear enough to create tension while retaining uncertainty.
Leviticus tends toward the second approach.
The romance may also be stronger than the scares for some viewers
Even positive criticism has sometimes emphasized that Bird and Clausen’s relationship can become more emotionally powerful than the horror surrounding it.
That will not necessarily be a weakness for viewers who appreciate horror-romance or character-driven supernatural stories. Someone expecting relentless scares, elaborate creature mythology, or a primarily visceral horror experience may respond differently.
The difference between the film’s extremely strong critical response and its somewhat more divided public ratings is therefore worth noticing. “People think Leviticus is great” is broadly true, especially among critics, but it does not mean the movie satisfies every kind of horror audience equally.
A useful way to judge whether the film works
Rather than asking only whether the creature is frightening, it is useful to watch Leviticus through three connected questions:
- Does the supernatural rule create difficult choices? A monster becomes more interesting when characters must sacrifice something meaningful to remain safe.
- Would the emotional conflict still matter without the horror? In this case, the relationship gives the supernatural story its emotional weight.
- Does the horror change the meaning of ordinary actions? Looking at someone, approaching them, being alone, or trusting a familiar face all acquire new consequences.
By those standards, the film’s reputation becomes easier to understand. Its central concept keeps affecting behavior instead of functioning only as an attractive premise for trailers and posters.
Why the praise for Leviticus makes sense
Leviticus is not admired simply because it combines queer themes with supernatural horror, nor because its monster has an unusual ability.
Its strongest achievement is integration.
The romance makes the monster frightening. The monster makes intimacy uncertain. The religious and social context explains why that uncertainty is emotionally destructive. The setting reinforces isolation. And the performances make a conceptual threat feel personal rather than theoretical.
That does not make the film beyond criticism. Some viewers may want subtler symbolism, stricter supernatural rules, or a more frightening film than a romantic one.
But the enthusiasm surrounding Leviticus has a clear foundation: it understands that a horror premise becomes memorable when the threat does more than endanger a character’s body. It changes what that character is allowed to believe about the people they love.
For readers interested in stories where something familiar gradually becomes unsafe, the microfiction archive offers more short encounters with uncertainty, fear, and situations that begin to feel wrong.
Sources and further reading
- Rotten Tomatoes — Leviticus for the current critic and audience reception.
- Metacritic — Leviticus for aggregated critical reviews.
- Sundance Institute — “Leviticus” Turns First Love Into Midnight Horror.
- Filmmaker Magazine — interview with Adrian Chiarella on the film’s horror language and visual ideas.
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