Adrian Chiarella makes the romance matter as much as the threat in Leviticus, a feature debut we recommend for its tenderness and unease. His direction trusts the young actors; his dialogue sometimes explains what they have already shown.
Fi1m perspective
In Leviticus (2026), an exorcism promises to cure two boys of their attraction, and Chiarella makes the promise itself frightening. We were horrified by the adults treating that desire as something to be driven out. The supernatural pursuit supplies a recognisable horror plot, but the community makes life frightening before the pursuer has much work to do. Chiarella’s strongest decision is to take the boys’ romance seriously, giving us a reason to care beyond wondering where the next threat will come from.
Chiarella worked as an editor before directing the shorts Touch (2014), Black Lips (2018) and Dwarf Planet (2020). Television work followed, including episodes of Totally Completely Fine (2023) and Five Bedrooms (2023). Leviticus is his feature debut, and its unevenness is mostly in the writing rather than the handling of actors or place. That distinction matters in a film which could so easily have reduced its characters to examples of cruelty and suffering.
Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen make the attraction convincing without needing the screenplay to underline it. Mia Wasikowska’s Arlene Reid gives Chiarella a way to consider an adult’s conflict without excusing what the adults do. He allows her that space even though our sympathies stay with the boys. The dialogue is less assured: at its bluntest, it explains the harm that Bird and Clausen have already made apparent.
Tyson Perkins’s cinematography makes the rural setting feel confining, as though the boys cannot get beyond the community’s scrutiny. Bethany Ryan’s production design gives that community ordinary, inhabited surroundings, and the familiarity makes the intolerance harder to dismiss. These choices work because Chiarella does not need every location to announce that it belongs in a horror film. The prospect of growing up here is already enough to make us uneasy.
The debt to It Follows is clear in the pursuing force that makes desire dangerous. Chiarella gives the device a specific purpose by treating the feelings being punished with tenderness, though the tension dips late on. That familiarity need not disqualify a horror film when its people matter this much. Start with Leviticus for the boys, and forgive the occasions when their writer says too much.
Biography
Adrian Chiarella is an Australian film director and screenwriter. He graduated from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.
He wrote and directed the feature Leviticus (2026), which premiered in the Midnight section of the Sundance Film Festival. His earlier short films include Dwarf Planet (2020), Black Lips (2018) and Touch (2014). Chiarella has directed episodes of the series Totally Completely Fine (2023) and Five Bedrooms, and wrote the "Walking Gambit" episode of Erotic Stories, for which he received an AWGIE Award in 2025.
