Making the queer horror romance Leviticus' was an exploration and a reclamation

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In writer-director Adrian Chiarella’s “Leviticus,” gay teens in small-town Australia are stalked by a shape-shifting monster that takes the form of whomever they most desire.For cautious newcomer Naim (Joe Bird), that’s Ryan (Stacy Clausen), the classmate he’s been stealing kisses with in an abandoned mill, making it dangerous not only for the boys to be alone together but to act on their budding feelings.“I wanted to make a film that embraced the fear and anxiety of being a young queer person with the fear and anxiety that’s inherent in every horror movie,” says Chiarella, whose striking debut feature uses genre to reflect traumas experienced by LGBTQ people around the world.Built around Bird and Clausen’s impressive performances and produced by Causeway Films (“The Babadook,” “Talk to Me,” “Bring Her Back”), the film’s tense blend of chilling metaphor, coming-of-age drama and tender romance made it an instant breakout at the Sundance Film Festival, where it earned the buzzy if not entirely accurate moniker of “Heated Rivalry” meets “It Follows.” (Chiarella, who’s written and directed for Australian television and calls those comparisons “encouraging,” had seen the hockey romance while he was in postproduction: “Who hadn’t?” he says with a grin.)Neon acquired the film out of Sundance and opens the film Friday, adding another must-see debut to a banner year for new voices in horror following Curry Barker’s “Obsession” and Kane Parsons’ “Backrooms.” The socially pointed “Leviticus” also arrives with added gravity in a moment when support for LGBTQ rights has seen a marked backslide in the U.S.Bird stars as 17-year-old Naim, who’s just moved to a dreary conservative community with his religious mother Arlene (Mia Wasikowska, giving a chilling portrayal of parental complicity after a three-year absence from the scr...