"We first see teens Naim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen) as they engage in a clandestine hang, that familiar dance of a play-fight leading into a kiss. For Naim, it's a new world opening up, a reason to believe there might be something to be happy about in an otherwise dull new town with his warm yet clueless single mother (Mia Wasikowska)."
"But when Naim sees Ryan engaging in a similar tryst with Hunter (Jeremy Blewitt), the son of the local preacher, he allows his heart to overrule his head and does something he'll live to regret. Once their secret is out in the open, Ryan and Hunter are forced into a conversion-therapy ritual, led by a mysterious outsider. The boys initially laugh it off, rolling their eyes at his hokum, but something takes ahold of them and once it's over they realise they've been cursed."
"No one else can see it and it only comes to you when you're alone but it will keep coming until you're dead. It's a crafty spin on an often lazily derivative subgenre what if your queer desire had a demonic manifestation and speaks to a familiar deep-rooted fear. It's not only about the self-destruction such feelings might bring but also what horrors you might inflict on someone else as well."
Leviticus centers on an isolated Australian town where religious fervour brands queer desire as a curse. Teenagers Naim and Ryan begin a secret relationship, but Naim witnesses Ryan with Hunter, the preacher's son, triggering a consequential act. After exposure, Ryan and Hunter undergo a conversion-therapy ritual administered by a mysterious outsider and emerge cursed. The curse manifests as a violent apparition that appears as the object of desire, visible only to the afflicted and striking when they are alone until it kills. The narrative probes persecution, tragic consequences of forbidden love, and how desire can warp into destructive violence.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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