SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Leviticus” and “Obsession,” both currently playing in theaters.Deep into the new horror movie “Leviticus,” there’s an interlude that’s stunning for how simple it is. Naim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen), two teenage boys, have faced down struggles both prosaic and metaphysical. And now, they’re effectively alone together, seated in the backseat of a largely empty commuter bus. Freed, for the length of the bus ride, from everything outside it, the boys start to kiss, then to fumble, gently — even tenderly.
This deserves emphasis because it’s the first moment in queer director Adrian Chiarella’s “Leviticus” that the boys have had a moment to enjoy each other’s company. In their first encounter, a trip to an abandoned mill undertaken after masculine Ryan seems to sense that he and sweetly shy new-boy-in-town Naim might share a secret inclination, their tentative grapplings occur on the narrow boundary between intimacy and violence. Subsequently, both boys, being raised in rural Australia as members of a restrictive church, are brought before a “deliverance healer,” an exorcist figure who curses each to be stalked by an apparition of that which they most desire — Naim must dodge a version of Ryan, and vice versa.
