Australian filmmaker Adrian Chiarella has arrived with one hell of a calling card. His acclaimed feature debut Leviticus, a queer horror film from Causeway Films, the genre outfit behind Talk to Me, Bring Her Back and The Babadook, is now showing in Australian and U.S. cinemas. Watch the full interview above, then read on for our feature article.
Starring Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen, alongside Mia Wasikowska, Leviticus follows teenage boys Naim and Ryan as they form an unexpected connection. When their bond draws the attention of their community, a ritual is performed on them, releasing a violent entity that takes the form of its victim’s truest desire.
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It is a sharp, intimate premise: desire turned into the thing that hunts you. Speaking with Screen Realm, Chiarella said finally sending the film out into the world has brought the expected mix of nerves and excitement.
“I think it’s really good to finally be here,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it for so long and working on it for so long.”
That theatrical release matters, too. Leviticus is a horror film built to be felt communally, with Chiarella saying the genre works best when audiences can share the experience in a room together.
“We made a horror movie, and I think horror movies just work really well in cinemas,” he said. “I think people love watching them not only with their friends, but also with a few strangers around them too, so everyone can share in the feeling that’s going on. It’s a very visceral genre.”
The Monster at the Heart of Leviticus
The first spark for Leviticus came from Chiarella’s interest in exorcisms being performed on queer teenagers in different cultures around the world. At one stage, he imagined something close to The Exorcist with a queer spin — a punchy concept, but one he quickly realised came with a serious problem.
“I thought, well, that’s only perpetuating the myth that people who perform that stuff really believe in, which is there’s some sort of gay demon inside of people,” he explained.
So he inverted it. Instead of a ritual pulling something out, what if it forced something in? What if the horror was not desire itself, but the fear placed around it?
That shift gave Leviticus its killer hook: a monster that appears as the person its victim most desires. As Chiarella put it, the entity “lures you and disarms you and tricks you,” before ultimately scaring you away from your own feelings.
Why It Had to Be Horror
For Chiarella, Leviticus was never going to be a straight drama wearing genre clothing. Horror was baked into the idea from the beginning, partly because those were the films he turned to while going through experiences similar to those faced by the film’s young characters.
He also pointed to the long history of queer artists shaping horror, using monsters, doubles, transformations and taboo imagery to express ideas that were not always safe or easy to say directly.
“I knew how important this genre was to our community,” Chiarella said. “Throughout history, a lot of incredible queer artists and filmmakers have worked in this genre and really shaped it into what it is.”
The Films That Helped Shape the Unease
Although It Follows has come up in some conversations around Leviticus, Chiarella’s reference points stretch further back and wider.
John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing was a major influence, particularly its paranoia and the way it blurs the line between self and other. In Carpenter’s film, the fear is simple and brutal: can you trust the person in front of you? Chiarella wanted to take that uncertainty somewhere more emotionally dangerous.
“What if it was someone that you actually had feelings for and maybe even loved?” he said. “What if that was the embodiment of the figure in front of you, and you didn’t actually know if you could trust your own feelings towards that person?”
He also drew from Japanese horror, naming the original Ring and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure and Pulse as touchstones. Not the loud, jolting kind of horror, but the slow-burn dread that creeps in and refuses to leave.
That influence is felt throughout Leviticus, a film more interested in lingering discomfort and emotional drive than easy answers.
Building Naim and Ryan
For the horror to work, the relationship between Naim and Ryan had to land first. That made the casting of Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen absolutely crucial.
Bird, who audiences may know from Talk to Me, immediately stood out to Chiarella once he auditioned. The filmmaker said Bird had a rare ability to present “a real truthful teenager,” while Clausen’s versatility made him the right fit for a role that required him to play both Ryan and the entity appearing to Naim.
Once the two actors were brought together, the decision became easy.
“As soon as they started doing scenes together, I could see that Joe and Stacy just had a natural connection,” Chiarella said. “The chemistry between the characters was just so undeniable.”
To deepen that chemistry, Chiarella went beyond standard rehearsals, sending Bird and Clausen on in-character adventures to filming locations, through shopping centres and even into an escape room. The aim was to build trust, ease and a natural rhythm before the cameras rolled.
By the time shooting began, the bond was there. The intimacy and stunt work still required careful technical preparation, but the emotional connection had already been built.
Why Leviticus Keeps Things Lean
Running at 88 minutes, Leviticus does not over-explain itself, and that restraint was very much the point. Chiarella said the writing and editing process involved constantly asking what the audience needed to know, what could be left unsaid, and where explanation might weaken the spell.
“There’s a real power in letting the audience draw the threads together themselves,” he said. “It’s almost like they can create a better movie in their head than anything I can show them.”
That approach gives the film much of its force. The mythology is not treated like a manual to be unpacked; the horror comes from mood, suggestion and emotional consequence.
What a First Feature Taught Him
Before Leviticus, Chiarella had worked across shorts and television. That background helped him move quickly, but a feature required a different rhythm.
In Australian television, he said, directors can be shooting nine or ten pages a day. A feature is still far from luxurious, but it allows more room to think through the vision.
“You’re putting more thought into the vision and slowing down a little bit to kind of get there,” he said.
Chiarella also credited his creative collaborators, including cinematographer Tyson Perkins, production designer Beth Ryan and editor Nick Fenton, with helping shape the world of the film from the ground up.
Asked what advice he would give emerging filmmakers, his answer was clear: use short films, web series and lower-stakes projects to take the big creative swings.
“This is the chance for you to take risks and to do something bold,” he said. “Really just put your own spin on everything and make sure your voice is really felt and seen and heard.”
With Leviticus, Chiarella has done exactly that — delivering a first feature with a strong horror hook, a clear point of view and a monster that cuts because of what it represents.
Leviticus is now showing in Australian and U.S. cinemas.
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