Leviticus director shares harrowing backstory that inspired film and ‘harsh’ ending

The director of the Australian queer film Leviticus has spoken about the experiences that formed the film’s backstory and explained the bittersweet ending for Naim and Ryan.

It’s been a week since Leviticus released internationally, and it’s still all anyone on FilmTok can talk about. The horror movie stars Naim and Ryan, two queer Australian teenage boys, stuck in a conservative small town. Their love story is interrupted after they’re forced to go through conversion therapy at their church through some sort of exorcism.

On his backstory growing up in the LGBTQ+ community, director Adrian Chiarella said he grew up in a similarly conservative setting.

I didn’t have religious parents, but I went to a religious school. I did experience homophobia, not only from the kids at the school, but from a more institutionalised point of view in terms of passages and things being said to us at school assemblies and in classrooms,” he said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

He continued: “As I was writing a movie about this entity that makes you question whether you can trust that the person you love is in front of you or not, I discovered that’s the overall theme with all of the characters. They’re all people who are not what they seem to be.”

The ending of Leviticus shows Naim and Ryan on a bus together, headed to an uncertain future as they try to live new lives outside their small town. Even though the creature still follows them, they try not to let fear rule their lives.

“It’s quite a harsh ending in terms of the mother-son relationship, but having seen a lot of films about conversion therapy, they all seem to give the parents this miraculously redemptive ending.”

Leviticus is currently in cinemas across the US, New Zealand and Australia.

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