Leviticus *** (2026, Joe Bird, Stacy Clausen, Mia Wasikowska, Tyallah Bullock, Jeremy Blewitt, Ewen Leslie) – Classic Movie Review 14,000

Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen star in the 2026 horror film Leviticus as teenage boys Naim and Ryan in a rural Australian town whose secret romance sets off a violent entity that takes the form of the person they most desire — each other.

Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen star as teenage boys Naim and Ryan in a rural Australian town whose secret romance sets off a violent entity that takes the form of the person they most desire — each other, in debut writer / director Adrian Chiarella’s 2026 psychological supernatural horror film Leviticus.

Leviticus starts by grabbing the attention with its exciting premise and eerie opening sequences, and tries its darnedest to hold attention, but the movie doesn’t quite work or fully sustain its premise. However, it is still very striking, and impactful, with weird ideas flying all over the place, and above all extremely smartly shot, so it’s flowing with evil atmosphere and menace in high visual style.

It plays with the familiar themes of religious trauma, identity, abuse, conversion therapy, and homophobia rather than tackling them, or at least tackles them so obliquely that they are backgrounded as allegory in favour of the frightening horror movie it seems to want to be. Demons of the mind, we’ll all agree, are difficult or impossible to erase, the monsters that never die. Fine, but queer horror is an awkward mix, and Adrian Chiarella struggles to put both elements tastily in the blender. Can you have your cake and eat it? Popular wisdom says not.

Leviticus gets repetitive, even in a relatively short running time, and eventually seems to have nowhere to go, then finally goes nowhere. The ride is fascinating though, always involving, and even sometimes mesmerising, and the film is, well, quite impressive overall.

Joe Bird, Stacy Clausen, and Mia Wasikowska as Naim’s mum give classy, outstanding performances, bringing passion and feeling into a chilly horror film, humanising what could be just mechanical.

Is it scary? It is quite bloody and violent in places, and worrying in others, but not terrifying. There’s quite enough horror, thank you, stopping just short of slasher movie territory. It works best as a twisted gay love story, quite hauntingly romantic, like a Grimm’s Fairy Tale for teenage boys. It does provide a handy manual on how not to conduct secret romance in a rural Australian town. Boys, beware when you go down to the woods today.

Well, the monster will never die, but how about the love of Naim and Ryan?

Genre: Horror, Romance, Sci-Fi

Actors: Joe Bird, Stacy Clausen, Mia Wasikowska, Tyallah Bullock, Jeremy Blewitt, Ewen Leslie.

Director: Adrian Chiarella

Country: Australia, United States.

Leviticus 20:13: ‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable.’

© Derek Winnert 2026 – Classic Movie Review 14,000

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