“What if there was some ritual that put some seed of fear inside of its victims to make them scared of their own desires? And that’s where I came up with this idea of a horror movie monster or an entity that looks like the person you’re most attracted to,” Chiarella tells ABC Audio of the film’s premise.
He adds, “And once I had that, I thought, well, now I’ve got a horror movie, but I really want to focus on this other thing that I’m interested in, which is the love story.”
Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen star as Naim and Ryan, the two teenage boys at the center of the love story who are each forced to undergo a ritual in their devoutly Christian community with the aim of scaring them straight.
“I think the love story has to work for the horror to work,” Bird says. “Because I think you’ve got to care about these characters and care about this relationship.”
The film was an early success at Sundance and SXSW, and reviews have been drawing comparisons to the queer hockey romance series Heated Rivalry – with one Letterboxd review dubbing it “Haunted Rivalry.” Chiarella and Bird say they appreciate being mentioned alongside an impactful piece of media.
“They’re two very different things, I think, but it is exciting that there’s this kind of ecosystem of queer stories that exists and that can sort of allow audiences to keep the conversation going,” Chiarella says.
Leviticus hits theaters Friday.
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