Courtney Howard // Film Critic
LEVITICUS
Rated R, 1 hour and 28 minutes
Directed by: Adrian Chiarella
Starring: Joe Bird, Stacy Clausen, Mia Wasikowska, Jeremy Blewitt, Nicholas Hope, Davida McKenzie, Shannon Berry, Tyallah Bullock, Ewen Leslie
There’s an unsettling, stifling feeling of isolation and loneliness that permeates filmmaker Adrian Chiarella’s LEVITICUS. Blessedly, there’s also a resounding sense of beauty and bravery to accompany it. His coming-of-age story about queer teens disturbingly forced to carry an omnipresent curse is steeped in an oppressive atmospheric dread deeply rooted in the religious conservativism found in middle-to-lower-class suburbia. Whether audiences read the text as straight-forward or allegorical, the auteur’s ability to continually haunt us not solely with spookiness, but also with sincerity is what truly resonates. It’s an assured directorial debut.
Teenaged Naim (Joe Bird) has a major crush on Ryan (Stacy Clausen), but they can only act upon their desire in secret in their small, religious town in Australia. In this former industrial town, a church has sprung from the ruins (a sharp underlying commentary on collapsing institutions) and with that a claustrophobic community has settled there. The pair has found love in a hopeless place, kicking around a nearby abandoned, dilapidated mill and kissing in the golden-hour light that pours through its cracked, broken windows. They exchange stolen glances and knowing smiles on their way home, back into reality. Though we don’t get to see much of Ryan’s parents (by design, we can only assume), Naim’s devout mom (Mia Wasikowska) takes him for worship and leads sing-a-longs in the car.
Their almost idyllic existence is shattered, however, once naive Naim makes a grave mistake after catching Ryan and another classmate, Hunter, (Jeremy Blewitt) smooching in Ryan’s back yard amongst the flapping bedsheets air-drying outside. Naim’s jealousy causes him to report the incident to Hunter’s father Rod (Ewen Leslie), their preacher, who hires a traveling enigmatic Deliverance Healer (Nicholas Hope) to allegedly cast out the wickedness from his son and Ryan. But instead, he introduces a malevolent entity that manifests as the person they most desire. As Hunter and Ryan are plagued by violent apparitions that Naim witnesses, Naim confesses to his mom, who promptly enlists the Deliverance Healer to save her son. As mayhem ensues, the teens must then figure out a way to beat this unbeatable force.
Chiarella takes the genre’s blueprint and re-engineers it to suit his characters’ needs. It follows a basic outline wherein the teens meet a traditional monster (the entity that messes with their minds), seek out advice from a knowledgeable source (in this case Jessica, played pitch-perfectly by Shannon Berry) and attempt to escape their nasty nemesis (which serves as brave defiance). While the horror aspects walk us along a semi-predictable path, what sets this apart is what the filmmaker does during our journey, adding fascinating character detailing and thematic craftsmanship along the way. He both embraces and upends tropes. The jump scares – whether they be waking up from nightmares within nightmares or other startling frights – are earned through escalating tension. Gore and body horror elements are slight but evident, from a victim’s bloody hand in the opening segment to Ryan’s almost severed ear in the school’s washroom. Symbolic and metaphorical context also richly roots the bleak romance. The monster isn’t necessarily the entity, although that’s a major factor. It’s also the bigoted parents who fail to help these kids and bring an inexorable nuisance into their lives.
The accuracy with which Chiarella and co depict the absolutely insidious, ghoulish nature of gay conversion exorcism is genuinely gutting. We wish so desperately for someone – anyone – to step in and do the right thing, yet no real savior arrives. In these sequences featuring the ritual, cinematographer Tyson Perkins’ soft, effused lighting defies the brutality of the Deliverance Healer’s sinister act, as if these vulnerable teens are being cradled by spiritual tenderness whilst having their spirits tortured. Jed Kurzel’s score serves to unnerve in complementary fashion to the action being captured. Editor Nick Fenton’s steadied cuts amp up the horrific tonal qualities of these kids’ dire circumstances. Production designer Bethany Ryan’s minimalist, snug-gone-sour aesthetic has these characters pop against the background environments. Emma Bortignon’s sound design also plays a crucial part, as we hear breath echo within the soundscape.
Female characters captured through this lens present a unique dichotomy. Naim’s mom is a spiteful woman who will both baby her son by picking olives off a pizza and place him in a dangerous environment. Hunter’s sister Lizzie (Davida McKenzie) clearly cares about her brother, yet is driven to take drastic steps to hurt others caught in his same predicament. Plus, Jessica’s caustic unhelpfulness ultimately winds up helping the duo think of a smarter approach to their problem.
Bird delivers the goods as a guileless hero. He nimbly negotiates the extreme emotions with the precise amount of restraint. Clausen’s performance is arresting. His role’s built-in duality as both a loving protagonist and a deceptive antagonist is a sight to see, both when he’s acting vulnerable and when the mask drops. The two leads share great chemistry, making their relationship feel real, raw and honest. They earn our intense emotional connection. During the captivating action-forward sequences, Bird, Clausen and Blewitt contort their bodies and levitate not in pleasure, but in pain. All three handle the physicality with aplomb.
LEVITICUS is a harsher, heart-stopping IT FOLLOWS, both unrelenting and unwavering in its aims. Beauty is found within the bleakness. As evidenced throughout the course of the film, this curse that’s supposed to keep the two teens apart winds up doing the exact opposite. The sentiments posited present an interesting, surprisingly harmonious contradiction as it’s a heartening reaffirmation of power and a re-framing of co-dependence not as a pejorative, but a positive. And in horror films, the only thing that matters is staying alive, no matter the cost.
Grade: B+
LEVITICUS will release in theaters on June 19.
