To Kiss a Ghost | LEVITICUS Film Review

WEB EXCLUSIVE Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist

Leviticus is named after the book from the Old Testament, which in part lays out the archaic laws of sexual morality. Most controversial is one commandment which, even in its slight variations of phrasing from one translation to another, has rippled appalling consequences throughout the rest of history: ‘18:22 – You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination’. Historians and scholars have since argued that this text is not, in fact, addressing homosexuality but actually incest or pederasty. A more popular contemporary response argues the line’s obsolescence by questioning the other things considered ‘abominations’ in the Book of Leviticus – eating shellfish or wearing blended fabrics, for instance – that are not held to the same standard by ideologues. Whatever the reason one takes for debunking this narrative, the damage has already been done.

In Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus, the gay youths at risk of being cast out in their churches and schools also face a similarly irreversible course correction. Naim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen) are two Australian teenagers raised in their local church who we meet play-wrestling in an abandoned warehouse – romantically and literally falling for one another. After a tryst with the preacher’s son, and offending their homophobic parents, the task of conversion therapy falls on the church’s ‘deliverance healer’ (Nicholas Hope) to do a little more than simply ‘pray the gay away’. Through a particularly brutal supernatural ritual, their pastor’s method of ‘purifying’ the boys is in fact a curse that will acclimate their desires and prey on them from the inside of their heads. Most viewers, I imagine, would see this elder dressed like an evil Sam Neill and suspect foul play, but even the open-minded among us will have to submit defeat when they see the young boys choked purple by invisible forces. For the rest of Leviticus, Naim and Ryan are haunted by violent apparitions assuming the form of the person they love, and their scaremongering church has turned a blooming relationship into an abject fear of being around one another.

Contemporary horror fans will recognise a similarity in this premise to David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (2014) – a much-celebrated landmark film of A24’s early oeuvre – about a sexually transmitted death curse, which returned to the lonely coming-of-age suburbia of A Nightmare on Elm Street. In this film, Mitchell articulated a Freudian universe where teenagers navigate an encroaching world of sex and death, and the adults are nowhere to be found. The comparison isn’t an insult to Leviticus; both films are fundamentally about the same thing, and both share tableaus of human figures and objects lifted into the air by ghosts unseen to passing witnesses. Unlike It Follows, however, Leviticus ends up being less an exploration of internal or unconscious conflict than a plea for the external forces that help Naim and Ryan overcome their peril: support, intimacy, and companionship. And in contrast to It Follows, parents are actually seen in these households, but they may as well be invisible too, for the lack of empathy they show. The fewer people that are around, the likelier the spirit is to show up and wreak havoc, but because the boys don’t have much of a support network in this awful town, they’re ironically compelled to rely on one another’s company. So the question is not whether Naim and Ryan will be driven apart, but how long they are willing to stay together, given the looming threat. There does eventually surface a conflict which drives Naim and Ryan apart, and the stinger line is pretty devastating: ‘If you see anything that looks like me, don’t go near it – it won’t be me.’

Ultimately, I found myself grasping at thin air with Leviticus. It is perhaps a little too empty – and I’m not only referring to the wide open spaces in rooms and roads. Besides Clausen’s striking double-role of playing both the real and false Ryan, its actual horror style is more in line with the zany slapstick of Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare, and the exposition leading us to those shock moments is disappointingly schematic. One example comes immediately after Naim is meeting with Ryan and his sister in a parking lot at night, and one of them off-handedly reveals something devastating. Immediately, as if summoned, a gang of hooded teenagers emerge from the shadows to give the boys a hard time, almost cartoonishly keen on beating people up. They are left in the dust almost as quickly as they emerge, and the immediate redundancy of this threat is one of the many things that make Leviticus rather cut and dry. With the number of times Naim frictionlessly beckons towards a likeness of Ryan, which is very likely to be the ghost, you would be forgiven for gleaning that desire outright trumps survival instinct in the human mind. But sometimes Naim’s willingness to brave the risk is a very moving part of the metaphor, and gives the film’s ending a strong if incomplete sentiment of survivorship. Avoiding spoilers as best as I can, the best scene in Leviticus takes place on a bus, and you spend the time waiting anxiously for something to shatter the moment – a slam, a reveal, a jumpscare; something! But what happens when that doesn’t arrive? And isn’t it nice to imagine the rest of your life following suit?