What if being your authentic self could kill you? For many members of the Queer community, it’s a tragic conundrum that’s confronted daily, whether through an intolerant neighbourhood or an unsupportive family. In Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus, however, such bigotry takes on a far more sinister, supernatural form. Taking its name from the Book of Leviticus, which details how to appease God and purge sin through ritual sacrifice, Chiarella’s coming-of-age horror hybrid transforms a predatory paranormal entity into a potent allegory for the lingering trauma and cruelty inflicted by conversion therapy efforts and the crippling anxiety that comes with having to live a lie.

As this deadly spirit stalks the film’s clandestine lovers, it comes to embody a painful but fundamental truth: something so hateful and unrelenting could only emerge out of the aether from our collective prejudice and spiritual decay. In turn, Chiarella’s calculated, atmospheric vision not only makes us shudder but transforms moments of love and compassion into quiet acts of resistance—rendering them our only fragile hope in the face of such intolerance.

Chiarella’s story follows Naim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen), two teenage boys exploring their sexuality before they’re outed and subsequently subjected to a cultish form of conversion therapy, conducted by a shaman-like figure, dubbed the “Deliverance Healer” (Nicholas Hope). The experience leaves them cursed by a murderous, unrelenting force that stops at nothing to quell their desires. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it also manifests as the embodiment of the person they desire the most—which just happens to be each other—trapping them in a blood-curdling cat-and-mouse chase, where no one else but the intended victim can see this shifting spectre.

While Leviticus draws on a similar setup as David Robert Mitchell’s 2014 breakthrough, It Follows, which also employs an invisible paranormal entity as a sexual metaphor, Chiarella filters it through a far more existentially chilling lens, where deeply entrenched intolerance and prejudice can transform the people we care about into our deadliest adversaries. As we’re kept on our toes and left guessing if we’re seeing the “human” versions of Ryan and Naim, Leviticus unfolds as a nail-biting procession of smoke and mirrors, echoing the LGBTQ+ experience and the daily turmoil of questioning your loved ones, support systems, and even the tenets of your lived reality.

It’s an effect mirrored by Chiarella’s muted colour palette, which captures a suburban community that zaps all inkling of personality, passion, and expression from its members. Coupled with a whirring, electro-synth score and subtle camera movements that extract unadulterated tension and catharsis from negative space and human embrace, Leviticus comes close to forging a unique horror identity when it’s not hampered by the need for repetitive, more traditional scares and imagery.

Yet, even as Leviticus treads shaky ground, it remains absorbing in the innate, authentic chemistry between Bird and Clausen, who radiate palpable warmth and ache as they’re haunted by a force that assumes the likeness of the only person who makes sense to them. It’s a dynamic that culminates in a back-seat tryst aboard a bus that is both tender and anxious, transforming their intimacy into a radical act of resistance against both their human and supernatural pursuers.

While Leviticus unfolds as a somewhat repetitive experience, with its concept stretched even across a brisk 88-minute runtime, its paranormal thrills nonetheless reflect painful, socially constructed realities that persist across the queer experience. As the film crescendos to Frank Ocean’s “Self Control,” it suggests that the song’s namesake was never worth holding onto anyway.

Leviticus releases on June 19th.