Neon releases Leviticus on June 19, and the buzz arrives pre-loaded: a seven-figure Sundance acquisition, the producers behind Talk to Me backing it, and a wave of It Follows comparisons that the film both invites and earns. Writer-director Chiarella's debut stars Joe Bird and Mia Wasikowska in a queer supernatural horror built on a genuinely sharp premise — the entity manifests as the person you desire most. That hook is the kind of idea you can build a subgenre on. The execution doesn't fully match the concept, but it comes close enough to matter.
The It Follows lineage is the obvious read, and it's fair. Like David Robert Mitchell's film, Leviticus runs on a single elegant rule — desire summons the thing that will destroy you — and on dread that escalates by proximity rather than gore. But where It Follows kept its threat anonymous and inexorable, Chiarella makes the horror intimate by giving it a face you ache for. Watching the entity wear the form of the person a character most wants is a specific, queasy kind of terror, and it's the film's best idea by a wide margin.
Wasikowska and Bird Carry the Weight
Mia Wasikowska has spent a career making strange material feel lived-in, and she does it again here, grounding the metaphysics in a performance of real longing and dread. Joe Bird, the relative newcomer, matches her — his character's desire is the engine of the plot, and Bird plays the shame and the wanting as the same emotion, which is exactly right for the story Chiarella is telling. The queer text isn't subtext here; it's the load-bearing wall, and the film is braver for refusing to code it.
Where the Debut Shows
The seams are in the structure. Chiarella has a killer premise and a strong eye, but the middle act repeats its central scare a beat too often, and a couple of mythology-building scenes stall the momentum the concept generates so easily. The ending lands emotionally without fully closing the rules the film sets up — a forgivable sin for a debut with this much ambition, but a sin nonetheless. The Talk to Me producers' fingerprints are visible in the practical, tactile menace, and that's a compliment.
Does it dethrone It Follows? No. But the comparison is a credit, not a crutch. Leviticus is the rare debut whose reach mostly meets its grasp, and whose central idea will outlive its imperfections. The seven-figure Sundance number was a bet on a filmmaker. On the evidence here, it was a smart one.
SCREAM SCALE: 7.9. A confident, genuinely unsettling debut built on one of the best horror premises in years, anchored by two excellent performances. Docked for a saggy midsection and a rulebook it doesn't fully honor. Not the next It Follows — but the first Chiarella, and that's plenty.
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