I think the Philippou brothers are the warning. Their demented films are truly unnerving affairs, highlighting dark parts of Australian life outside of the Hemsworths and Robbies we’re sold in the US. Leviticus is the latest example, showing this growing sinister underbelly of Australian society the further inland you get. It’s not just funnel web spiders or inland taipans in the Outback. It’s a bird too. Joe Bird, to be exact.
After viscerally making me sick in Talk to Me, Bird is back this time as Naim, a shy kid who moved to a small religious town in Victoria Australia with his mom Arlene (Mia Wasikowska). Naim doesn’t fit in, but does catch the eye of Ryan (Stacy Clausen) in church. The pair continue a secret romance in their conservative town, but, being high schoolers, they eventually get caught. So naturally, a deliverance healer (Nicholas Hope) is brought in to exorcise the sin from these boys lives, which completely works and turns the kids straight and everyone lived happily ever after.
Obviously, that’s bullsh*t, and writer/director Adrian Chiarella shows it. What actually happens is a terrific allegorical well that makes Leviticus so potent. It taps into all sorts of guttural questions everyone has to answer. On the surface we’ve got the horrors of gay conversion therapy, which doesn’t work and only leads to worse consequences for the “sinners.” Dig a little deeper: there’s stuff in here about fear, and how strong and misguided a driver it can be from people close to you. Deeper still, what happens to Naim and Ryan is a rich exploration of societal vs personal desires, and what happens when they are on conflict with one another. I’ve met enough members of the LGBTQIA community to know that what Chiarella is showing us in Leviticus has real emotional stakes even without the religious elements. But this isn’t some gay tragedy either: through the specificity of Joe and Ryan’s plight there’s universal concerns as well that Chiarella will leave sitting in your stomach for a bit after Leviticus ends.
But a tragiromance wouldn’t be entertaining enough to drive Adrian’s point home. We need some real fear, and thankfully the director nails it. With simple editing choices, Leviticus uses the It Follows playbook to scare the hell out of everyone watching. The opening sequence unsettles from the get go, as empty high school pools are never a good choice for someone to be wandering around. Mia Wasikowska wonderfully returns, but replacing her quirky child characters with a cold unfeeling malice that pervades all the adults in this town. Chiarella washes the color out of the frame with a bunch of greys and blues, sucking the life out of this place for poor Ryan and Naim. Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen are awesome here, flexibly shifting their personas depending on what the scene needs, doing equally well in the sweet intimate moments as well as the scary hair raising ones. Their bond is necessary to overcome some of the script’s logic gaps, instead using that strong connection to keep the pair together for even more mayhem and melancholy.
I never really had much desire to see the outback of Australia in the first place. But Leviticus cements my sound choices. Also, Adrian Chiarella and Philippous, I dig your movies, but, are you like, ok? I hope you have love in your lives or a good therapist, and that these movies are outlets and not your deep dark real thoughts you’re exorcising yourselves.