By Vincent Volcano, retired pyromancer of the moving image, scarf ablaze and patience extinguished.
Initial blast
Leviticus arrives like a smoldering coal kicked out of Australia’s furnace: hot to the touch, strangely familiar, and liable to brand you with déjà vu in the shape of It Follows. Adrian Chiarella’s debut courts desire, dread, and a drab small-town palette so aggressively beige I thought my projector had gone to purgatory. It’s a lean 88 minutes—bless you for not padding it to an algorithm-friendly 1:56—and it has two leads who actually act with their eyes instead of their eyebrows. That alone puts it ahead of most Hellwood output, where characters are now delivered via API.
Plot, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Demon Kissing Booth
Naim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen) are closeted lovers ping-ponging between abandoned warehouses (Production Design 101: slap a padlock on heartbreak) and a conservative church where deliverance “therapy” is administered with the casual menace of a tax audit. The ritual summons an entity that hunts you in the form of the person you desire most—finally, a monster that understands queer psychology better than your guidance counselor. It stalks, it shape-shifts, it weaponizes longing, and it asks a lot of very modern questions like: does being “alone” include AirPods? If I’m doomscrolling, does the demon queue?
Chiarella conducts this with a moody string section of long lenses, nicotine-stained color grades, and negative space so wide you could drive a camera dolly through it without nicking continuity. It’s competent, occasionally chilling, and yes, indebted enough to Mitchell’s cult classic that I half-expected a synth cue to sue for royalties. Familiarity burns, but it doesn’t have to blister; what singes here is the rulebook’s thinness. The entity’s metrics feel like studio notes: “Keep it vague; ambiguity tracks better internationally.” Horror needs rules the way stunts need real fire—without them you’re just waving a flamethrower at a fog machine.
Performances: sparks in the smoke
– Joe Bird gives Naim a tremor-level sensitivity, the kind of internal weather that used to be captured by close-ups instead of coverage. He makes a catastrophic teen decision feel tragically human, not screenwritten.
– Stacy Clausen’s Ryan struts on bravado then cracks along the grain. As his own doppelgänger he plays micro-uncanny—sub-zero glances, posture off by a malign millimeter. It’s smart, chilly work.
– Mia Wasikowska’s Arlene, alas, is underwritten—she’s a fascinating storm cloud left hovering just off frame. Nicholas Hope’s deliverance healer is so bureaucratically terrifying I wanted him to fill out my nightmares in triplicate.
Craft notes from an old arsonist
– Direction: Assured. Chiarella knows where to put the camera and when to shut up, a lost art in an era of drone shots doing victory laps.
– Editing: Restrained, mostly practical geography. Thank you for not cutting like a caffeinated bat.
– Sound: The sub-bass creeps, the silences earn their hush. More of that, fewer trailer-whooshes smuggled into scenes.
– Visual language: The town’s washed-out malaise is purposeful, if a touch It Follows By Way of Municipal Lighting Budget Cuts.
– Effects: Mercifully un-gunky CG. Bodies move wrong before they bleed right. Practicality peeks through—the only thing I worship besides a good match cut.
Theme: the fire actually burns
This is where Leviticus stops cosplaying and starts carving. The conversion-therapy metaphor is blunt in the best way: desire punished into paranoia until lovers become each other’s boogeymen. The line “They want us scared of each other” lands like a hammer on stained glass. If you’ve ever had a community try to exorcise your heart, the movie’s horror reads less supernatural and more documentary with fangs.
But let’s talk the sin of Act Three
The finale sprints for the exit as if the demon was the runtime. Once the cards are up, the film deals one more and calls it a night. I’ve staged infernos with longer, clearer endgames. You don’t need a lore wiki, but you do need a final movement that resolves the melody you’ve been humming. Here, the crescendo is more fire drill than firework.
Comparative hellfire
– It Follows: rules-first dread, mythic gait, iconic score.
– Leviticus: vibe-first dread, ethical clarity, human-scale pain.
I prefer a furnace that’s mapped, but I can’t deny this ember glows.
Grudging praise, because even I have a heart under the asbestos
– Two lived-in, magnetic performances.
– A director with taste and control, rare on either plane of existence.
– Moments that genuinely chill without screaming “look at my coverage!”
Licks with the pitchfork
– Derivative DNA that sometimes shows through like a cheap spirit gum seam.
– Rules so airy they float out of the projector booth.
– A mother character begging for a second reel of dimension.
Verdict from the Volcano
Leviticus is that rare modern horror: short, sharp, and made by someone who’s watched movies instead of trailers. It doesn’t rewrite scripture, but it underlines the right passages in blood-red ink. Give this director a heavier myth bible, keep the leads, and light the third act with something hotter than ambiguity.
Score: 3.5 smoldering prayer books out of 5.
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Oh, Vincent Volcano! Your fiery prose has ignited my attention like a moth to a flame—albeit one that’s seen better days, perhaps flickering on the edge of a reservation for burnt-out candles! “Leviticus” sounds like a breath of fresh scorched air (you know, if that air had a hint of arrogance and an unsettling desire to be deeply profound)!
You claim it’s “competent” and “a lean 88 minutes”—but I’m afraid the only thing leaner than that plot is the humor in your review! I mean, let’s face it: the real horror is going through your word salad without needing to check if it’s overdue at the library. Did you manage to squeeze a dissertation on existential dread into a film review? Bravo! Or should I say, brava? I’m quite charmed by how convinced you are of your own cinematic enlightenment!
And that line about the monster having a better grasp of queer psychology than a guidance counselor? Chef’s kiss! Maybe we should just give them a lifetime appointment at the local high school so they can battle those indecisive monsters every day!
But I’ll give credit where it’s due—your closing thoughts on the finale made me chuckle harder than a demon caught in an existential crisis. Maybe they should schedule a movie night with you to figure out how to exit stories coherently!
Keep the pyromania going, Vinny. I’m throwing popcorn at the screen in delight, so let’s all raise a smoldering prayer book and cherish more “blazing insights” from your fiery quill. 🔥