This piece contains spoilers for Leviticus.
In 2026's Leviticus, a boy called Naim becomes convinced by religious believers that it is good to be alone. It’s not an unreasonable conviction; indeed, Naim believes being alone may be the only way to truly avoid the demonic entity that has plagued him since a forced attempt at conversion therapy by his church. But as we begin to see throughout the film, being alone might prove fatal.
Leviticus is set in a tiny industrial mill town in Victoria, Australia. It’s an isolating setting, one that feels so bleak and alienating that it can sometimes feel more like a dream (or nightmare) than reality. Still, for Naim, even more isolating than the town itself is the evangelical-coded congregation he attends with his mother—a congregation with an extremely troubling method of dealing with gay congregants like the minister’s son, Hunter. When Naim (Joe Bird) and another boy named Ryan (Stacy Clausen) are outed for their secret romance, Naim’s mother allows the pastor to send him to a “deliverance healer” who performs a dark exorcism ritual to supposedly cast the homosexuality out of him. What happens instead is that Naim is plagued by an invisible force that takes the form of Ryan, cornering him whenever he is alone and usually trying to physically harm or kill him. Through the deliverance healer’s ritual, the person embodying Naim’s desire has become the embodiment of his fear and torment.
As the film continues, the entity plaguing Naim and Ryan usually poses as the other person: Naim sees it as Ryan; Ryan sees it as Naim. And then, when they drop their guard, the entity goes in for the kill.
The immediate consequence of this curse is that Naim and Ryan are filled with paranoia and fear about being together: How can they know it’s really the person they love and not a demon in disguise? This paranoia was deliberate; it’s exactly what the deliverance healer intended, driving the two of them apart. And as the two boys uncover the implications of their situation, they begin to realize that this entity will continue to take the shape of whoever they desire romantically in the future—meaning no one is safe to truly love, and physical danger will abound everywhere.
It was novel, for me, that Leviticus imagines conversion therapy as a fundamentally demonic force posing as something Christian. Even in pro-LGBTQ+ faith circles, we usually label such treatments as “harmful” and “cruel” in a physical and therapeutic sense, but we tend to avoid hyperbolic language about spiritual warfare or the soul. This makes sense, given that such language tends to be used by proponents of conversion therapy. LGBTQ+ people ourselves have understandably been taught to distrust this language when wielded as a weapon against our ordinary human experiences.
But watching Leviticus, I was struck anew by the reality that conversion therapy is more than just harmful in a secular sense; it is a spiritually charged process that accomplishes the will of Satan. Jesus says in John 10:10 that “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy”—a statement that some Christians have associated with the powers of the devil and hell. What is the fruit of conversion therapy, if not the stealing of possible love and honest intimacy, the killing (often by suicide) of queer youth, and the destruction of the image of God in all its abundance and diversity? How could conversion therapy be anything but demonic?
READ MORE: Coming Out Doesn’t Have to Be a Horror Story
Like many young queer teenagers, Naim in Leviticus initially attempts to find some safety and understanding from his mother. Unfortunately, Naim’s mother, Arlene (Mia Wasikowska), has little time for his pleading. She is busy with work and church, and she stubbornly believes that her son has only been tricked into liking boys through peer pressure. Most of all, she does not buy anything he’s saying about an invisible, spiritual force plaguing him since his encounter with the deliverance healer. This is a tragic point of hypocrisy because, as Naim recounts at the start of the film, his mother has spent her life begging him to “believe in things you can’t see.” In one particularly heartbreaking moment, as Naim tries to tell her what’s happening to him, she switches the car radio to the Christian worship music station to change the subject. It’s a poignant image: the use of religion not as a way to be vulnerably known, but as a way to check out.
Watching Leviticus play out reminded me a bit of the various anecdotes and profiles of gay Christians who had undergone conversion therapy captured by Jeff Chu in his book, Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America. There are a few particularly heartbreaking stories in Chu’s book from celibate gay Christians who have largely distanced themselves from community and friendship, whether to avoid encouraging temptation or to spare themselves the shame of being known and judged. In the film, Naim begins to believe that distancing himself from connection might be the only way to survive. Personally, I know that grief all too well from my own time of closeted loneliness and isolated dishonesty. Back in John 10, Jesus contrasts the work of the thief with his own work: “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly.” Whether it’s the story of Naim, my own story, or several of those stories spotlighted in Jeff’s book, the fruit of repression does not feel like that abundant life.
I first read Does Jesus Really Love Me? many years ago, not long after it came out. Rereading it more recently, I was struck by how far the LGBTQ+ acceptance movement had come since the book was published in 2013. It really did feel as though attitudes toward LGBTQ+ folks had shifted drastically, from nationwide marriage equality to the self-admitted failure and closure of conversion therapy ministry Exodus International.
The tides have been shifting again, though. Many conservative lawmakers are openly hostile to LGBTQ+ rights. LGBTQ+-related topics and histories are being systematically purged from government recognition. After decades of progress, public acceptance of things like same-sex marriage and transgender issues has started to recede. I think it’s worth calling these things what they are: demonic and destructive.
This may all seem rather bleak, but there’s some saving grace in Leviticus: The entity plaguing Naim is incapable of attacking him when he’s around other people. It’s a stirring thematic point, one that increases the life-or-death vitality of the relationships Naim has and the people he can turn to. In one stirring moment, Naim pleads with random bystanders in a gas station: “Please, I need to be around people. Just one person, please, anyone.” The bystanders do not offer him much sympathy, but eventually, he and Ryan realize they need to stick together rather than letting demons drive them apart.
In Genesis 2:18, God memorably declares that “It is not good for man to be alone.” It's the first time in the entirety of the Bible that God deems anything “not good.” And though this statement (and the subsequent creation of Eve) has been used by many over the years to enforce various ideas about men’s and women's roles and the meaning of heterosexual marriage, the statement as it appears in the original text implicates the entirety of the human condition, and goes far beyond marriage or even romance. Human beings are made for relationship. It is not good for us—any of us—to be alone.
Leviticus is not a perfect movie; in many moments, the world it constructs feels so universally bleak that I wished it would acknowledge the other corners of reality that do hold true community and love—beyond just that of one secret romance. As it stands, Naim and Ryan may realize that being together is better than being separated, but having only one safe person in your life can lead to codependency, where the bonds of community would be healthier. The film’s final conclusion is satisfying enough, but it leaves a lot on the table in the way of real catharsis and healing.
Still, horror is often better at showing what we should reject more clearly than what we should embrace. This film broke my heart for a generation of queer kids in the folds of repressive forms of faith, reaching out for connection and being met with fists, folded arms, and silence. We need each other. It is not good to be alone.
This film broke my heart for a generation of queer kids in the folds of repressive forms of faith, reaching out for connection and being met with fists, folded arms, and silence.
Georgia Coley is a documentary filmmaker and culture writer living in Nashville. She writes about the intersection of trans experience and theology at her Substack, Georgia In Her Mind.
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