{"id":2582,"date":"2026-06-20T16:36:44","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T16:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=2582"},"modified":"2026-06-20T16:36:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T16:36:44","slug":"why-horror-film-leviticus-is-summers-most-surprising-love-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=2582","title":{"rendered":"Why Horror Film \u2018Leviticus\u2019 Is Summer\u2019s Most Surprising Love Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n<strong>SPOILER ALERT:\u00a0<\/strong><em>This story contains spoilers for \u201cLeviticus\u201d and \u201cObsession,\u201d both currently playing in theaters.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Deep into the new horror movie \u201cLeviticus,\u201d there\u2019s an interlude that\u2019s stunning for how simple it is. Naim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen), two teenage boys, have faced down struggles both prosaic and metaphysical. And now, they\u2019re effectively alone together, seated in the backseat of a largely empty commuter bus. Freed, for the length of the bus ride, from everything outside it, the boys start to kiss, then to fumble, gently \u2014 even tenderly.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=2580\">Box Office: \u2018Toy Story 5\u2019 Soars to $71 Million on Opening Day<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tThis deserves emphasis because it\u2019s the first moment in queer director Adrian Chiarella\u2019s \u201cLeviticus\u201d that the boys have had a moment to enjoy each other\u2019s company. In their first encounter, a trip to an abandoned mill undertaken after masculine Ryan seems to sense that he and sweetly shy new-boy-in-town Naim might share a secret inclination, their tentative grapplings occur on the narrow boundary between intimacy and violence. Subsequently, both boys, being raised in rural Australia as members of a restrictive church, are brought before a \u201cdeliverance healer,\u201d an exorcist figure who curses each to be stalked by an apparition of that which they most desire \u2014 Naim must dodge a version of Ryan, and vice versa.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIt\u2019s conversion therapy via aversion therapy: If Naim and Ryan can never figure out whether their lover is real or a spectral figure sent to kill them, they\u2019ll probably stay apart. But, as anyone who spent some portion of their teen years in a pew might understand, the church has not accounted for the power of the adolescent libido. Naim and Ryan are together on their bus trip after trying to uncover more information about the demon persecuting them; it\u2019s no one\u2019s idea of a joyride. But it allows them a stolen moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cLeviticus,\u201d picked up by Neon after a Sundance debut earlier this year, is poised to be another data point in a summer of horror breakouts by first-time directors. \u201cObsession\u201d and \u201cBackrooms\u201d have already scrambled expectations for what\u2019s possible for grabby, youth-oriented horror with at least a little more than scares on the mind. But, seeing \u201cLeviticus\u201d the same day as \u201cObsession,\u201d I was amused at just how little the films \u2014 both festival-anointed, indie-studio-backed relationship dramas by first-time filmmakers \u2014 shared thematically. That\u2019s no knock on either film: \u201cObsession\u201d is a very effective but pitch-dark look at the dynamics of straight couples, using the tools of genre to diagnose protagonist Bear (Michael Johnston) as, ultimately, a coward and abuser. The evil stalking him, a girlfriend who adores him so much that she will ruin his life, is one that he summoned (destroying the psyche of an innocent bystander in the process) out of an indolent desire to be loved without behaving lovably. And he deals with it by not dealing with it, until he kills himself. The end!<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=2578\">\u2018Atlantic Rhapsody\u2019 Takes Best Film at Shanghai\u2019s Golden Goblet Awards<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tI found this approach bracing and heartily satisfying, but I appreciated, by contrast, the gentler touch with character in \u201cLeviticus,\u201d in part because the struggles of gay teens seeking love differ from those of incel-adjacent twentysomething straight men. Here, Naim and Ryan have no particular trouble <em>finding <\/em>a youthful version of love. But, as their seeming to attempt to beat one another up before falling into an embrace attests from the film\u2019s first scene, keeping it requires overcoming an ingrained shame that\u2019s terrifying, even before the feeling becomes embodied and bloodthirsty. (In this, the show shares a sensitivity with \u201cHeated Rivalry,\u201d a show that captured hearts by depicting the emotional terrain of the closet, and the inner lives of characters who have very good reason to want to stay there. I\u2019d also recommend that curious viewers check out the Australian TV drama \u201cInvisible Boys,\u201d about the toll the closet takes on young men in a \u201cLeviticus\u201d-like setting.) The demon appears as if it wants to caress both boys up until it starts choking them, and part of what scares Naim and Ryan is that the two types of contact had already gotten hopelessly confounded by cascading spirals of self-doubt.\u00a0That self-doubt will feel familiar, painfully so, for any viewer who grew up stalked by the demon of desiring in a different way.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAnd the specific shame running through \u201cLeviticus\u201d is rooted in the fact that the emotions governing Naim and Ryan are treated as, whether fixable or not, simply wrong. One of the film\u2019s sharpest ideas is that Naim\u2019s mother, played by Mia Wasikowska (who is, startlingly for those who revere her early work, legitimately old enough to play the mom of a teen), isn\u2019t a monster; she loves and wants her version of what is best for him, and they share a rapport based on years of history. The decisions she makes \u2014 including, we learn deep into the film, forcing the unorthodox therapy on Naim despite knowing its potentially lethal implications \u2014 are monstrous. But then, she\u2019s provided Naim with a lifelong education that no place is safe: Not home, and not the privacy of his own thoughts or heart.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRyan\u2019s learned similar lessons, and, for a time, runs from the real Naim, seeing in him the creature who shares Naim\u2019s face but not his soul. But, in the film\u2019s endgame \u2014 after Naim, using the exorcist\u2019s tool of fire against the demon, traps him inside the mill where the boys first tussled \u2014 Ryan and Naim see one another, and each recognizes, somehow, that the other is real, and that their liberation from this curse could be the start of finding freedom from all else that\u2019s binding them. We see them on a bus once more, simply lounging and sharing a pair of headphones. It\u2019s not sex \u2014 it doesn\u2019t need to be, as they have all the time they need ahead of them. But it\u2019s a stolen moment all the same, a chance to breathe after all that they\u2019ve endured, and the optimistic ending of what may be summer\u2019s most surprising love story.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=2576\">Shanghai TV Market Debuts Dual-Venue Format to Drive Chinese Content Sales Overseas<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The horror film &#8216;Leviticus&#8217; is a terrifying, violent drama that also depicts two young gay men falling in love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2194],"class_list":["post-2582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-leviticus-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why Horror Film \u2018Leviticus\u2019 Is Summer\u2019s Most Surprising Love Story - 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