Leviticus

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Adrian Chiarella directs. Tyson Perkins behind the camera. Jed Kurzel scores. Nick Fenton cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Profitable at the box office. Produced in Australia, United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

• 188 minutes exactly — the "classic feature" runtime most directors aim for.
• 2Shot for just $3.5M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
• 3Released this year — you're seeing it while it's still in the cultural conversation.
• 4International production across 2 countries: Australia, United States of America.
• 5Directed by Adrian Chiarella, shot by Tyson Perkins. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
• 6Original score by Jed Kurzel. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
• 7Editor Nick Fenton shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
• 8Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen and Mia Wasikowska carry the top of the cast.
• 9Marketing tagline: "It will never stop.".
• 10IMDB entry: tt39143902 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
• 11Classified under 15 themes, including "supernatural", "priest", "teenage boy", "lgbt".

The technical file

Cinematography

Tyson Perkins

Original score

Jed Kurzel

Editing

Nick Fenton

Production design

Bethany Ryan

Costume design

Zohie Castellano

Makeup / hair

Eliza Langdon

VFX supervisor

Paul Nelson

Sound

Emma Bortignon

Stunt coordinator

Warwick Sadler

Runtime

88 min · 1h 28m

Aspect ratio (typical)

1.37:1 (Academy)

Status

Released

Budget

$3,500,000

Box office

$8,493,480

Return

243% of budget

Original language

EN

Certification (US)

R

IMDB

Leviticus (2026) ↗

Metacritic

83/100

IMDB rating

6.4/10 · 11,393 votes

MPAA

R

Also by

Adrian Chiarella

• 
  Totally Completely Fine

  2023 · ★ 7.3
• 
  Five Bedrooms

  2019 · ★ 6.7
• 
  Black Lips

  2018 · ★ 3.3
• 
  Dwarf Planet

  2020
• 
  Touch

  2014

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

• 

  ▶
  Deliverance Clip

  Clip · Official
• 

  ▶
  Official Trailer

  Trailer · Official
• 

  ▶
  Adrian Chiarella, Joe Bird, and Stacy Clausen on Leviticus

  Featurette · Official
• 

  ▶
  Meet the Artist 2026: Adrian Chiarella on “Leviticus”

  Featurette · Official

Community reviews

What people are saying

• Nick2026-06-21
  ★ 8/10

  A masterclass in queer horror! Adrian Chiarella brilliantly subverts the conversion therapy trope by turning the "cleansing" ritual into a living, shape-shifting nightmare. The entity taking the shape of what the boys desire most—each other—is a devastatingly poetic metaphor. Tyson Perkins’ gorgeous, bleak cinematography of rural Australia makes every frame feel loaded with dread. It’s atmospheric, deeply romantic, and utterly heartbreaking.

  Read full review ↓
• Sierbahnn2026-08-01
  ★ 6/10

  If you have seen It Follows, then a lot of the beats of this movie will be familiar to you. This movie, however, is better than It Follows because it gives a context as to why it happens. The characters therefore become more relatable and the tension becomes more grounded than the jump scares of It Follows. The cast in this movie are doing a great job, and the director is doing fantastically. The effects are well produced and the indifference of certain side characters heighten the sense of abandonment that the characters suffer through. It's a good watch.

  Read full review ↓
• CinemaSerf2026-09-03
  ★ 7/10

  There is something really quite horrific about this story, but it's not so much that we have anything going bump in the night - it's that a community's solution to two lads caught in a clinch is to subject them to something akin to an exorcism. "Ryan" (Stacy Clausen) is the hunky, tousled blond lad who has been becoming closer to "Naim" (Joe Bird). The latter lad appears much more impressionable and in pretty distraught when he finds his new-found love messing about with "Hunter" (Jeremy Blewitt) in his backyard. Desolate, he reports him to his parents. Their solution is to bring in a creepy "deliverance healer" (Nicholas Hope) who waves a cigarette lighter around for a while, quotes some distinctly ropey scripture, and then pronounes the boys cured! Except, well his definition of cure actually releases a malevolent spirit into their lives that adopts the appearance of the other and that will stop at nothing to destroy him. Initially, the boys have no idea that this menace is out to get them, but after a fearsomely violent encounter leads to tragedy, "Naim" finds his mother has signed him up for the same treatment - ostensibly to keep him safe. Hmmm - what chance now he and "Ryan" can tell friend from foe and stop it before it stops one of them? There are two really quite engaging performances here and what's more the pared-back style of the production does much of the heavy lifting without the need for special effects that the limited budget would never have been able to deliver adequately. Much of the sense of peril here is left to our own imagination and to some clever use of the photography to often quite menacingly juxtapose the camera and the characters - sometimes leaving us as uncertain as them as to who is who/real. It's quite a sad critique of small-town mentalities and of their reliance on religiosity to avoid facing what is real in the lives of their own offspring who just happen to be different from them, and though it could perhaps have spent a little more time developing the personas a bit more, it has an intimacy to it and is well worth ninety minutes as horror, like beauty, proves to be very much in the eye of the beholder.

  Read full review ↓

Production companies

Who made it

• 

  Causeway Films

  AU

• 

  Salmira Productions

  US

• 

  Screen Australia

  AU

• 

  VicScreen

  AU

• 

  Arenamedia

  AU

• LA

  Lazy Susan Films

  AU

Key crew

• ProducerSamantha Jennings
• ProducerKristina Ceyton
• ProducerHannah Ngo
• Executive ProducerSalman Al-Rashid
• Executive ProducerSimmons Frazier
• Executive ProducerSam Frohman
• Executive ProducerDaniel Negret
• EditorNick Fenton
• CastingNikki Barrett
• Production DesignBethany Ryan
• Costume DesignZohie Castellano
• Executive ProducerLiz Kearney
• Executive ProducerMia Wasikowska
• Executive ProducerDale Roberts
• Executive ProducerRobert Connolly
• Prosthetic DesignerLarry Van Duynhoven
• Sound DesignerEmma Bortignon
• Music SupervisorAndrew Kotatko
• Visual Effects SupervisorPaul Nelson
• Line ProducerAntje Kulpe
• Associate ProducerRhavin Banda
• Script SupervisorSarah Vaughan
• Sound RecordistRoger Van Wensveen
• Stunt DoubleJames Dimitrakopoulos

Themes & keywords

What it's about, really

• supernatural
• priest
• teenage boy
• lgbt
• lgbt teen
• shocking
• conversion therapy
• queer
• supernatural horror
• gay theme
• queer horror
• psychological
• independent film
• psychological horror
• teen horror

Release history · US

When it landed

• Premiere2026-01-23· Sundance Film Festival
• Premiere2026-03-15· South by Southwest Film & TV Festival
• Premiere2026-04-08· New Directors/New Films
• Premiere2026-04-10· Miami Film Festival / Overlook Film Festival
• Premiere2026-04-19· PFS SpringFest
• Premiere2026-06-11· Queer West Film Fest
• Premiere2026-05-29· New Fest Pride / Cinemaq Film Festival
• Premiere2026-06-13· Provincetown International Film Festival
• Premiere2026-06-17· Frameline: The San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival
• Premiere2026-06-12· Lighthouse International Film Festival

Also known as

International titles

• รักร้ายกลายร่างTH
• Bóng QuỷVN
• LévitiqueCA