‘Leviticus’ Perfectly Captures the Horror of Homophobia

At the beginning of the year, I made a list of horror movies and thrillers coming out in 2026 that I was excited to see. Right up there with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple was Leviticus, directed by Adrian Chiarella. The film follows Naim (Joe Bird, previously Riley in Talk to Me) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen, also seen in Netflix’s Thrash), a doomed pair of gay boys in a close-knit religious community in Victoria, Australia. A series of so-called “deliverances,” which are like conversion therapy meets exorcisms, calls in some kind of demonic supernatural force. This entity terrorizes victims by appearing invisible to the rest of the world and looking like their loved ones.

Chiarella’s film feels significant for a few reasons. Sometimes genre fans get a horror movie that addresses sexual expression, like The Substance, or queerness, like I Saw the TV Glow, but rarely the intersection of the two. Especially in a post-Bodies Bodies Bodies world, where gayness is often incidental in horror movies, I was surprised to see that gayness was the driving factor in Leviticus.

Regarding the sexual boogeyman elements, film critics have already drawn comparisons between this film and It Follows. At the time, this idea felt fresh because it riffed on the puritanical moralism that persists in society today. The Maika Monroe-led film takes the sluts-deserve-to-die motif of horror movies and drags it to hell. But even though both Leviticus and It Follows feature a monster that punishes you for sins of the flesh, the more interesting parallel is how both films comment on shame. Because even if you’re affirmed enough in your desires to actively pursue carnal pleasure, shame can linger in the shadow like a specter.

More than It Follows, Leviticus feels like Disobedience, directed by Sebastián Lelio. Rachel Weisz of The Favourite and the Dead Ringersreboot stars as Ronit, a woman who returns to the Orthodox Jewish community of her formative years because of her father’s funeral. The story of why Ronit was banished starts to unfurl, all while she strikes up a torrid romance with Esti, played by and . External pressure from a staunchly religious community is the real villain in both this film and .Not only do the parents of Naim, Ryan, and the other queer Aussie kid, Hunter, actively facilitate these “deliverances” to exorcise the gay out of their kids, but, spoiler alert, we find out that the parents’ destructive wishes are intentional. An especially gut-wrenching moment is when Naim’s Mom ( a far cry from our warm gothic heroine in ) coolly reveals that she knew the deliverance ritual would keep Naim terrifyingly isolated and therefore safely celibate.