{"id":2529,"date":"2026-06-19T17:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T17:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=2529"},"modified":"2026-06-19T17:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T17:37:10","slug":"leviticus-how-the-romantic-horror-movie-was-inspired-by-a-regression-of-gay-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=2529","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Leviticus\u2019: How the Romantic Horror Movie Was Inspired by a \u2018Regression\u2019 of Gay Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\u201cLeviticus\u201d was born from a place of anxiety. It\u2019s perhaps a bit obvious, given the premise.<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018Citizen Vigilante\u2019 Review: Uwe Boll Does Armie Hammer No Favors With This Morally Bankrupt Thriller<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tIn the film that opens in theaters Friday, the first feature-length project from writer-director Adrian Chiarella, two teen boys in Australia fall in love, but after a dark, religious conversion therapy, they\u2019re pursued by demonic forces that look like the thing they desire the most: each other.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019d noticed there was this shift in the air in the last five or 10 years, at least in Australia, of a regression of a lot of the rights LGBTQIA+ people had fought so hard for,\u201d Chiarella says. \u201cParticularly in the language we were hearing in our political sphere, and also microaggressions in day-to-day life. I wanted to make a film about that, but I didn\u2019t want to go backwards as a filmmaker. I wanted to do something a little bit newer and a bit more personal. So I thought about the kinds of films that I watched at that time in my life when I was going through experiences similar to the ones in this film. They were horror movies, basically. And I think, like a lot of young queer people, I turned to that genre because of the way it explored otherness and that destabilizing feeling some of us have on our journey to self-discovery. So I brought the two things together, and I realized, \u2018Horror is the genre of fear.\u2019 It\u2019s where we ask the audience, \u2018What are you really scared of?\u2019 And that felt like the right space to explore homophobia in all its different shades.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite the dread infusing the movie, Chiarella is able to conjure plenty of passion between his lead characters, Naim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen). He says it\u2019s a result of being flexible in fine-tuning how much he hopes to turn up the romance and scares in each scene.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was being tuned all the way through, from the scripting stage right through to the rehearsal, with the actors and figuring out how we\u2019re going to convey this love story between the two of them, but also how do we convey this monster,\u201d Chiarella says. \u201cTo be honest, it\u2019s something we worked on right until the very end of post when we delivered the film. I think we were maybe only a week out from premiering the film at Sundance, and I went back into the edit just to change a few things because it wasn\u2019t quite sitting right, and it had been bugging me for so long. I wanted the audience to stay in that guessing game all the way through. We were always checking in with each other: Is this too scary? Is this tender enough? Also, this movie doesn\u2019t work without the chemistry between Joe and Stacy. The love story isn\u2019t going to work, but also the whole mechanism of that entity, that horror monster, doesn\u2019t actually work unless you really, really believe that these two young guys are attracted to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChiarella felt the onscreen passion between Bird and Clausen early on, when the pair was just submitting self-tapes. But after some workshopping with potential actors in callbacks, it was clear to Chiarella that they were the pair to tell his story. From there, he inspired the duo to keep fostering their bond.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOnce I cast them, I just encouraged them to hang out a lot together,\u201d Chiarella\u00a0says. \u201cThey became friends right off the back of that casting session. They stayed in touch, and even though they live in different states, they kept messaging each other and calling each other. When we started rehearsals, I remember I took them on a road trip around a lot of the locations we were going to shoot in, just for them to get used to the spaces, but also for them to get used to being around each other. I did lots of fun stuff with them. I dropped them in different parts of one of the towns we shot in and got them to find each other. I sent them to a crowded shopping mall in character so they could feel what it would be like to be these characters in public and what it\u2019s like to be around other people, and what it\u2019s like to have that connection with each other but not be able to show it in public. I sent them out to do a lot of things on their own. They did escape rooms. Because of that scene with the snake at the start, I got them to hold a snake. I got them to do a lot of different exercises that really just got them comfortable with each other, and made the actual job of having to act in this film not feel like they were having to put on some big show for everybody. It was just something that was happening in front of the camera.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Japan Hits Record 25 Annecy 2026 Selections, Unifies MIFA Booths in Show of Force<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tThe chemistry has been convincing to audiences and turned \u201cLeviticus\u201d into one of the year\u2019s buzziest horror movies months before its release. After debuting at this year\u2019s Sundance, Neon acquired the film in a seven-figure deal and gave it a prime summer theatrical date. While hype has built at other festival stops like South by Southwest and the Overlook Film Festival, Chiarella didn\u2019t predict that his movie would open in the wake of two improbable box office titans \u2014\u00a0\u201cBackrooms\u201d and \u201cObsession\u201d \u2014\u00a0that proved audiences were thirsty for unique, auteur-driven horror filmmaking.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a really, really exciting time,\u201d Chiarella\u00a0says. \u201cI think those two horror movies are incredible. I loved both of them. They\u2019re very tough acts to follow. I think the reason horror is having this resurgence is that people want to feel something again at the movies. The one thing that you can guarantee is that a horror movie is going to make you feel something. You might not like<\/em> the feeling, not everyone does, but you know for sure you\u2019re not just going to be sitting there and passively experiencing this thing in front of you, right? You\u2019re going to get a shock that\u2019s going to enter you through your body. I also think horror is a really great genre for first-time directors. It\u2019s very expressive. It allows you to really stretch your voice and see what it is that you can say, but also how you say it. It also doesn\u2019t require big stars and big-name actors. You can let the concept speak for itself. The fact that this genre is really taking off again, I think, means we\u2019ll see so many other more exciting new voices come out of the cinema in the next few years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for his own voice, Chiarella is hesitant to make any promises when asked if we would ever see another film set in this world or revisit Naim and Ryan in some capacity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wish I could give you a firm answer, but I\u2019m not going to,\u201d he says. \u201cBut what I will say is I know people really love these two characters, so there\u2019s something rich there. But on the flip side of that, this horror movie monster we came up with, this lore, the experience of people in the LGBTQIA+ community is very wide, and there are a lot of different things people have gone through. It might be the kind of territory that we can start speaking to other experiences through as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for Chiarella\u2019s next move? A focus on relationship-driven storytelling.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI always want to explore personal stories, very grounded relationships,\u201d he says. \u201cI want to work with actors to try and achieve something that feels very real, like you\u2019re just observing life. We had this saying when we were making this film, all through the shoot and through the edit. If something wasn\u2019t working, we\u2019d say, \u2018It just feels like a movie.\u2019 We don\u2019t want that. We want it to feel like life. Just because it\u2019s a horror movie and we have this one thing in it, which is this supernatural entity, doesn\u2019t mean the whole thing has to be all heightened and unbelievable. I would love to do that with other genres.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Memory, Freedom and Music Among Themes as Five Documentaries Chase Golden Goblet Glory at Shanghai<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tWatch the trailer for \u201cLeviticus\u201d below.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Leviticus’ writer-director Adrian Chiarella also explains how he blended romance and scares to make his new movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2150,2151,2152],"class_list":["post-2529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-adrian-chiarella","tag-leviticus","tag-overlook-film-festival"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Leviticus\u2019: How the Romantic Horror Movie Was Inspired by a \u2018Regression\u2019 of Gay Rights - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=2529\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Leviticus\u2019: How the Romantic Horror Movie Was Inspired by a \u2018Regression\u2019 of Gay Rights - 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