j

fear is the same thing that keeps ryan from saying anything when he sees how boys, how hunter treats naim at school. he hears the word they always say and suppresses flinching anger, then its accompanying despair at the watery look in naim's eyes.

ryan's been scared his whole life, but he's gotten good at fear. he's accepted the truth of who he is, what that means for him. he's learned he doesn't need to be scared of leaving bandee because he knows he never will. the fear of wanting hunter, wanting to touch him and wanting something real from him, was far outweighed by that detached surrender the first time he saw bruises from the impact of rocks on his own body. he takes it, takes what he can get, takes hunters fear and anger as well as his lust because he doesn't think he deserves anything else, because that's the only way someone touches and wants him back.

he's been burned so many times, the fear is distant compared to the exhaustion, the hurt, the guilt. his desire is a curse, a gnarled secret he holds in his ribcage. (and later, when hunter dies and naim almost does too, "it's all my fault" whispered guiltily in the rising heat, that secret burns worse than it ever has.)

he asks naim to go to the mill because the waves of want are rising over the immovable, solidified structure of pain and guilt. fuck, but he's just so curious. and at first it's hard to shed that defensive masculine posturing, but at least shoving at naim means he gets to touch him. and then naim surprises him, really, not just by kissing him back but by giving ryan the delightful revelation that naim is gentle. naim doesn't hurt him, doesn't push him off or call him a fag or throw stones. naim is under him-- and then he pulls away, retreating back into fear, and ryan feels confusion and hurt in equal measure.

ryan, possessive as he is giving, wants to share this secret thing with naim. he wants to be affirmed in his feelings in a way he never is with hunter. tell me you feel it too. tell me i'm not making it up. tell me i haven't corrupted you with this.

and he hears the unsubtle yearning in his own voice, a thin veil of casualty over a begging to be affirmed in his feelings. that twist of anxious yearning in his mouth, "there's nothing you like about this place?" naim, crinkly-eyed smile blinding, looks holy.

I love the idea of the entities in leviticus slowly looking more and more like an outdated version of ryan and naim, like their scared teenage selves they left behind that don’t resemble their adult selves. Like the more they live a happy life, the more they love and support one another, the harder it gets for the entity to be able to emulate them as they currently are. That’s how I feel when I look at pictures of myself in high school, my eyes look so sad and lonely, I was so desperate for friends, for confirmation that I wasn’t unloveable. My eyes look completely different now in pictures, I have a queer circle of friends, I look happy. I think that would be a natural and logical progression of how the entities slowly lose power. I believe the reason jessica lived such a miserable life after her girlfriend died is because she is alone, because she is isolated and doesn’t have anyone she can lean on, because she is absolutely consumed by fear and horror. The entity targets you when you’re alone because in isolation, without support you’re the most vulnerable, the most desperate for contact, the most likely to want to believe the entity is real even if logic dictates otherwise. So, my conclusion is, living in isolation without allowing yourself to love freely actually makes the entity more powerful, whereas having someone by your side, learning to love yourself, your queerness, finding your footing in the world and community with other queer people makes it much less likely to be able to trick you and harm you.

but naim keeps trying.

i think naim's persistence comes from his innocence. he naively believes others will provide safety and fix things if he asks them for help (the pastor, the police, the people in the store), and that applies to arlene as well. but naim is also just a mama's boy. his father is dead, and based on the way arlene had to move them all the way out to bandee to feel like she "belonged" it doesn't sound like they have any other family. arlene says early on that naim hasn't made any friends since they got here. aside from his mum (aside from ryan), naim is entirely alone.

"how young you reckon that mum was?" naim jokes after the service, the two of them standing away from everyone else. it takes a moment for her to soften, but arlene indulges his snipe at the church, whispering "probably twelve", and exchanging a conspiritorial grin with naim. this moment is a contest between us and them, and by joking with naim, arlene shows that she's willing to take a stab at the church to make her son smile. at this point, naim is still her priority. tho "psychtrance" doubles as showing us arlene isn't very attentive to naim's interests, it's also a continuation of the easy banter between them ("bet you thought that was funny."/"still do"). naim might have his frustrations abt his mother's religious fanaticism, but he's comfortable with her. they're close. he stands beside his mother at church bc he's too nervous to talk to anyone else. she is who he clings to when he's surrounded by unfamiliarity.

and when unfamiliarity becomes hostility, it's also arlene who he runs to.

he tries to tell her about the entity even when she's the one who caused him to have to fear it in the first place. he takes a blanket and pillow into her room and sleeps beside her on the floor like a little kid. when things with ryan have fallen apart and he sees the entity staring at him through the kitchen window, his first instinct is to call mum. though this is happening because of her, he can't believe that she won't eventually come to understand him. she's his mum. she brought him into this world, she fed him and clothed him and taught him most of everything he knows. she changed his sheets when he wet the bed, calmed him down from panic attacks, forgave him when he screamed and hit in the volatile grief-filled months of his father never coming home. she picked the olives off his pizza. nobody has sacrificed more for him. nobody loves him more.

so he tries again, believing that this time, this time she'll believe him. she'll say she's sorry for what she did and reassure him he's not alone. she'll pull him into her arms and wipe away his tears with both thumbs like he did when she was a little boy. like the little boy he still feels like whenever he's with her. he would let her, if she tried. he so desperately wants her to try.

but naim knows who he is now, and has come to accept that no one in bandee will help him because of it. so she admits it to her. "i've been here before with ryan" this is the first time naim has ever confirmed to his mother what they both already know, and it sets up another contest. her son or the church. us or them.

of course this is thinly-veiled code for don’t tell anyone about us, and naim agrees. he knows what happens to boys like them in towns like this—knows how important it is that this remain a secret. and it’s terrifying and thrilling and theirs, this secret, the one they get to share in this place that no one else knows.

when naim sees ryan and hunter together, he doesn’t run immediately to the pastor. he goes home, and he sits at the dinner table picking at his meal with something too big to name twisting inside him. he watches arlene—talking on the phone and pacing their tiny, barren house. he thinks about putting the words together in a way that she might listen. he thinks about the face she would make. he thinks about his dad’s gentle, placating hands and the way arlene used to melt into them. he mourns that piece of her, and says nothing at all.

he tells the pastor, and a boy is killed for it. and when ryan finds out what he did and says it’ll never be me, he sounds so hollow that naim knows there’s nothing to say that could reach him. he kills the thing with ryan’s face and joins the search party to look for him, because maybe if he saw ryan’s broken body in the sun-dried grass then he could know for sure that he’ll never see him again.

naim watches smoke drift from the burnt-out husk of their place, their secret. he watches people in hi-vis excavate it like an old tomb. he watches arlene wrap her arms around herself in a protective shield against the cold. the words are pushing at his lips and all he has to do is say them.

i’ve been here before, he says. with ryan.

it’s the closest thing to a confession that he can manage. when he looks back on this moment years later, he thinks of it as a leap of faith more than a coming out. i was here with him, he’s trying to tell her. we were here, together, we were together, we were hidden—it was a secret we shared and agreed to keep, i’m telling you now because i must, because i’m ready, because i love you, because i need you.

i can’t help you, she says. she’s never been further away from him. they told me it would keep you safe, she says. it’s so cold and so loving that he’s frozen on the spot, halfway between flinching back and reaching for her. we need fear, naim. it’s how we survive.

Like the most obvious reflection scene in the first one in the mill, where Naim and Ryan are making out, but as soon as Naim sees his own reflection engaging in homosexuality, he shuts it down. I’ve thought a lot about this, and I think it’s more the idea of having an out of body experience, if that makes sense. His relationship with Ryan doesn’t match the facade he puts on in Bandee, or around his mom. This is a completely secret life he’s begun that he’s only been taught to feel ashamed of, so even when he’s with Ryan, he can’t fully separate himself from the church, or the expectations he successfully sculpted himself to fit.

It’s not even just Naim’s reflection this symbolism is used with, it’s also Hunter’s, however brief it was. Fifteen minutes into the movie, we see Hunter for the second time, this time in the classroom setting. A student is reading a passage from the Bible in front of the class, and Hunter is sitting in the back with a mirror. It’s facing away from him, catching light to try to get it into this girl’s eyes to bother her. Going with the idea that reflections are representative of being gay, Hunter is actively turning the mirror away from himself and at someone else to hurt them.

When Naim goes to Ryan’s house where he catches Ryan and Hunter together, before he goes around to the backyard, he stops at a the window and fixes his hair. He engages with his own reflection in a positive way, in hopes of looking better for Ryan. He stares his queerness in the eyes and accepts it. He doesn’t turn his reflection away, he uses it to his advantage. The Naim we see entering Ryan’s backyard is one intending on being with Ryan, without shame. Obviously, we know that gets crushed, no shit. Naim ends up seeing the consequences of his queerness with Ryan and Hunter. Ryan, who didn’t care to look back at his reflection because it would get in the way, and Hunter, who turned the mirror away from himself to hurt others. And Naim, who in a moment of looking at it, got punished in the form of watching an allegory for a stoning. So Naim turns the reflection away, he uses it to hurt in a moment of betrayal and shame.

The next scene using reflection is the one of Ryan at the slushy machine. We see him standing, alone with a bruise on his arm, while the reflection shows two boys playing outside. Ryan isn’t looking at the reflection, but he we know he’s aware of it. The same way those two friends were having fun, Ryan was having fun with Naim (debatable with Hunter), an expression of his queerness that got punished. He wants to go back to the way things were, to when it just looked like two boys having fun instead of having a curse put upon them just for it. Naim walking in right after is just salt in the wound. There’s even a shot of the both of them with the same reflection of the boys in front of them. Not with Hunter, but with Naim. It’s Naim that’s the true representation of his homosexuality, of how all of it can turn on you so quickly. Ryan, much like the scene in the mill, still doesn’t look at the reflection, just at Naim himself.

Our last reflection shot in this scene, is just of Naim alone in front of window, the two boys still playing outside, as a bus comes into view, actively foreshadowing the ending of the movie. Of Ryan getting on the bus, and as the bus passes, Naim’s head turns with it. But instead of looking at his escape with Ryan, he looks at Arlene, and turns back to the window. Naim is instead now looking at the two boys playing, a representative of what he fucked up, by turning the mirror away from himself.

Naim goes back to Ryan’s backyard, but this time doesn’t check himself in the window, and we get the whole scene of Ryan talking to Naim’s entity, which Naim himself can’t see, or even know it’s him. Naim follows Ryan and the Entity all the way to the Photo Booth. We get the line from Ryan, speaking to Entity Naim “I thought you were scared”Considering the pictures that come out of the booth, of Ryan being intimate with the invisible Entity, we can assume this had to do with the first mill scene, where Ryan would’ve interpreted Naim pushing him away as being scared of being gay. Entity Naim isn’t scared of being intimate with Ryan, satiating Ryan’s own fears of his relationship with Naim.

As the photos of Ryan taking his shirt off come out on the other side, Ryan says “are you going to do it too? It’s just me.” The second half of that phrase can be taken in a way that he may not have mean— it is just him, alone in that booth, with a reflection of his homosexuality. But as soon as Ryan is attacked( the minute he’s outside of the booth, he becomes just as scared as he thought Entity Naim was. Of being seen, because now, it’s not just him. Ryan never sees the pictures in the Photo Booth, he never sees the reflection of his queerness.

The scene I really became aware of the mirror being used as a metaphor was the one right after Hunter’s death, when Naim has gone to the police to try and find help. We barely see who he’s talking to, just the plastic screen between them, and Naim’s reflection asking for help. We don’t hear the words that are being said in this scene, but we can pretty much assume by the next scene, where he’s trying to justify his belief in something invisible that came for Hunter, and is coming for Ryan next. Naim puts himself up right next to the picture of queerness in front of authorities, even before he outs himself, in his attempt to save Ryan.

Earlier in the movie, right after the second mill scene, we see a scene of Naim looking up at the sky from the car with Arlene with a smile on his face. The sky is a very old interpretation of God, and basically a materialization for Christians to look up to in hopes that he’s listening. When Naim looks to the sky, when he looks to God, it’s after the happiest he is ever seen in the entire movie.

But when Arlene and Naim are driving to the Deliverance Healer, as Naim looks out the window as he puts together his fate, we see a reflection of the sky once again across the screen. Where Naim once saw the beauty, he is now seeing it as a religion his mother fell victim to. A religion that he’s being pulled into against his will to shape him back into who his mother wants him to be. Naim is seeing the harms of Christianity, in one of his last final moments before his curse. Arlene says “I can’t lose you too,” with the shot of the sky reflecting on them. Her husband is dead, in Heaven, in the sky, and in her attempt to keep Naim safe, she’s sending him right into the arms of a religion that will never accept him. If the reflection Naim is looking at is a representative of his queerness, he isn’t seeing himself. He’s seeing the consequences.

Where I think I might be stretching a little is the take that the Entities are reflections too. We never even see Entity Naim from Ryan’s perspective, therefore, we never see Naim’s reflection of queerness from another lens. We never see Ryan’s reflection of queerness. And while I know that the Entity isn’t Naim, that made me start thinking about how Entity Ryan could be used as Naim’s reflection instead

In the funeral scene, Naim goes looking for Ryan, and comes upon the Entity instead. Naim confides in him about his meeting with the Deliverance Healer, and tells him that Arlene “can’t face anything that’s real.” Very similar and kind of ironic to Naim, who is facing an Entity, a version of Ryan that isn’t real.

The first mill scene is a direct setup to the bus scene, starting with Ryan and Naim becoming intimate in front of a singular mirror, and it getting shut down, vs in the bus, and here they become intimate in front of a shuttle made of entirely windows, all reflective surfaces. But Naim doesn’t shut it down this time. He closes his eyes and reaches his arm out, covering his reflection from himself, and continues with Ryan. He only pulls his hand away when he moves his head, completely obscuring himself with Ryan. The real Ryan, the positive face of his queerness and his physical antithesis to shame.

In the scene outside the church, Ryan tells him “I don’t want it to look like some other dickhead. I want it to look like you.” Even after having his ear almost bitten off, Ryan still wants the reflection of his queerness to have Naim’s face. That is until he doesn’t.

During the scene in Naim’s house when he’s alone, and he’s in front of the sink, we see his reflection again. Not only does he not look at it, once he turns out the lights, it immediately switches to Entity Ryan, right where Naim was a moment ago. This kind of backs of the idea of Naim and Entity Ryan being one and the same, even closer than Naim would be to Entity Naim.

The screen door scene is another instance of mirror parallels. Even though there isn’t anything reflective between Naim and Entity Ryan, they both mirror each other’s’ movements, as if they are reflecting the other, even up to the hands, pressing together that way. Entity Ryan tells Naim that “this is what they wanted. For us to be scared of each other.” Naim replies by telling him that he is, and Entity Ryan turns this down, and ends up referencing the snake with the frog in its mouth, from Naim and Ryan’s initial introduction to the movie, to try to reflect Naim’s memories to get closer to him. So if we treat Entity Ryan effectively as just a manifestation of Naim’s homosexuality, the apology Naim gives for outing Ryan and Hunter starts to ring truer. He’s looking Entity Ryan in the eyes, knowing it’s dangerous but trying anyways, to reach an understanding within himself with Entity Ryan as his conduit.

Entity Ryan always says what Naim wants to hear, or what Naim wants to believe, successfully functioning as the reflection of his fears. Naim is able to look himself in the eye as long as it isn’t wearing his face. It’s his queerness that’s always been the block for Naim’s reflection, and Entity Ryan is the embodiment of Naim’s queerness. Naim is only able to conquer (albeit briefly) Entity Ryan by showing it the same gentleness he shows the real Ryan. By showing softness to his reflection, he finds the strength to accept it, thus why he chooses a life with Ryan instead of a life scared of himself.

Thinking about how the beginning of the movie introduces the idea that he is so fearful — afraid of the snake, afraid of heights, and the threat of the spider. Afraid of his and Ryan’s reflection as they’re making out. He’s so scared, and he’s just a kid, and we see over and over again this childlike trust he has in the people who are supposed to help him.

Why does he go to Hunter’s parents? Obviously there was some aspect of jealously, but Hunter and Ryan were also actively hurting each other. He doesn’t just watch them make out. He watches them pelt each other with fucking rocks and I think it was scary enough for him to regress into the idea that they genuinely needed help.

So, he does what he was raised to do. He asks for help. He watches Hunter get dragged in to the dark and he goes to the cops and he asks for help. He has that nightmare and he asks his mom for help. He’s attacked by an evil entity and he runs into the gas station asking for help and NO ONE IS HELPING HIM. Not the church, not the cops, or Izzy, or his mom.

In the end at the mill, entity Ryan tells him again that they want him to be afraid. Then in the daylight IN THAT SAME PLACE his mom confirms it. She tells him he needs fear. HE ALREADY HAS IT. He was already afraid at the beginning of the movie!!!! He’s been afraid the whole fucking time !!!!

And as my good personal friend Henry Chang once said “If you cannot be unafraid, be afraid and happy.”