Indie Horror Summer

By Anne Gregg

2026 has been a great year for indie horror movies. Obsession and Backrooms cleaned up at the box office and proved movies do not need big budgets and big names to fill seats, They just need to tell good stories. Adrian Chiarella’s queer, gothic horror Leviticus deserves to be the next big summer hit.

Leviticus follows Naim (Joe Bird) an Australian teenager who has recently moved to a small town in Victoria, Australia with his religious mother Arlene (Mia Wasikowska). Naim develops a romantic relationship with Ryan (Stacy Clausen), a fellow classmate who goes to his church. Outside of their secret meetups, Ryan rarely interacts with Naim. One day, Naim spies Ryan making out with Hunter (Jeremy Blewitt), the pastor’s son. Wounded, Naim outs Ryan and Hunter to Rod (Ewen Leslie), the pastor. Rod calls a “deliverance healer” to rid the boys of their homosexuality. Unbeknownst to the congregation, the ritual invites a monster to take the form of the person they desire most to haunt the boys. The monster only appears when its prey believes they are alone. No one else can see it. Naim witnesses Hunter die by the hands of an invisible specter. When Naim reports this incident to the police, they do not believe him, instead they suspect he is suffering mentally. Naim ends up confessing to being romantically involved with Ryan. The police detective outs Naim to his mother. Arlene takes Naim to have the ritual performed on him. After the healing ritual, Naim is attacked by a monster that appears to him as Ryan.

Naim and Ryan cannot be alone, but they are alone. Their home is populated by acres of farm and industrial plants, scattered neighborhoods and abandoned buildings. The camera lingers on vast landscapes, utilizing ultra-wide shots so the characters become small blips in a world where there is nothing and no one for miles.

But the scenes filled with people are not comforting either, especially the scenes in church. They are cramped frames filled with bodies and watchful eyes. The church is claustrophobic. The most Naim can do without being noticed or judged is choose where to focus his attention. But when he is alone, the monster is with him. Loneliness is a death sentence and community is suffocation.

The monster is one half of a whole villain. It is a violent manifestation of internalized homophobia, But the church is just as sinister. Naim and Ryan aren’t safe in the community because their parents opt to “cure them” of their homosexuality. Naim and Ryan aren’t safe around other people. There is no solace for them, except for each other, and even then they can’t always trust if they are with each other or if they are with the monster.

Naim and Ryan live in fear of each other and of themselves, and of the judgment of other people. The monster weaponizes their desire to escape their fear. When the monster needs to convince Naim it is Ryan, it tells Naim he doesn’t fear Naim, he doesn’t fear their relationship. Naim doesn’t want to feel fear, he doesn’t want the oppressive eyes of the church or to worry about showing Ryan affection. He wants to hear that Ryan isn’t afraid of him. But Ryan is afraid of his feelings of Naim. Ryan’s monster looks like Naim.

Naim learns that the monster is vulnerable to fire after burning him with a lighter. The ritual bonding the monster to the boys involves a lighter. They are asked to concentrate their desires into the fire. Then the “healer” blinks the lighter and banishes those desires. Desire is a weapon. The monster uses desire to entrap its victims; and the victims can use that same desire to defeat it.

During their fight, The monster wrestles Naim to the ground and chokes him. As Naim struggles to break free he pauses and caresses the monster’s cheek, tenderly. The monster freezes. Naim stops fighting for one second to be gentle to a thing that looks like the person he loves. For a moment, he faces his monster without fear. Naim uses the monster’s hesitation to scramble out of the way and set the barn on fire. His fear comes back but he is able to brave it, to let his desire, the fire burn brighter than his fear.

In the final moments of the film, Naim finds Ryan at a bus stop, about to skip town. Naim joins him. As the bus drives them out of their claustrophobic town, Naim spies the monster in a farm field. He turns away from it and rests his head on the real Ryan’s shoulder.

We are taught to be ashamed of our desires, to suppress them. We must conform to what society wants us to be, needs us to be. We must oppress ourselves. Our desire, our queerness is a weapon. It defies patriarchal hegemony. It proves that the norms that dictate our lives are not absolute, they are made to suppress us. The monster exists as long as the fear does. Self acceptance isn’t easy. It doesn’t happen with a flip of a switch. It takes time to conquer your fears. Naim and Ryan are not free from the monster, but they know how to fight it now. And they are free from their church and the judgemental eyes that follow them wherever they go.

Horror is an embodied genre. Its goal is to manifest a visceral, embodied reaction from the viewer. It uses unsettling imagery, blood, and violence to frighten you. Leviticus presents life as a queer teenager in a conservative town, not as it actually is, but as it feels. It is horrifying, isolating, and claustrophobic. It is walking on eggshells everywhere you go. It’s longing for acceptance, for someone to understand how you feel and not shame you for it. It presents life as it feels, and ends with the promise that it doesn’t have to feel that way.

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About the Author

Anne Gregg is a poet and writer from Northwest Indiana. She is an English Writing major at DePauw University and is the editor-in-chief of her campus’s literary magazine, A Midwestern Review. She is a Media Fellow at her university and loves dissecting how LGBTQ+ people are portrayed in film and tv.