Picturehouse Recommends

Set in an Australian industrial backwater, Leviticus centres on teenager Naim (Joe Bird), who has arrived in a small, conservative town with his devout mother (Mia Wasikowska in sinister, God-fearing mode). Naim feels trapped but his spirits lift when he meets handsome rogue classmate Ryan (Stacy Clausen) and the pair are immediately drawn to each other. Chiarella and his lead actors brilliantly evoke the excitement, innocence and rush of initial attraction and first love – the film's colour palette brightens as the relationship blossoms – but it soon becomes clear that this idyll can't last.

Rooted in a community of overbearing faith, Ryan and later Naim are outed and a deliverance preacher (Nicholas Hope) is invited to cleanse their so-called troubled souls. Here, Chiarella conjures up a stroke of imaginative genius: undergoing a violent form of conversion therapy, Naim and Ryan find themselves targeted by a demonic presence that manifests as the person to whom the individual is most attracted – in other words, each other.