ā some thoughts about Leviticus
after watching leviticus, i couldnāt help but put it in my top 4 ā it has not left my mind since.
by the first watch, itās a simple concept. a horror film, a monster haunting the main characters, they scream and cry a little bit, fight it off internally, the end. thanks for watching, now get up. but truly, thereās so much more to this movie thatās way more noticeable after a second, more focused watch. letās break it down a little!
two souls intertwined
the most focused-on plot point, ryanās and naimās relationship. from the first minutes, we see their relationship being playfully/teasingly violent, which mostly comes out from ryanās side, as thatās what his persona is built on. theyāre rushing and pushing it. they donāt give eachother a second to thoroughly explore, feel and connect, they just straight up go into it. throughout the film, their relationship evolves from a āfriends-with-benefitsā thing to an actual, pure love and intimacy.
it becomes more collected, gentle and you can actually feel the intense tension between the two of them rather than aggressive lust, if thatās how i can call it. naim in one way or another, as shown, introduces ryan to fragility and vulnerability.
also, what iād like to point out cause i found it interesting! in the scene where naimās mother has a monologue about her relationship with God; how she found God in a quote unquote, terrifying silence, how he guided her, listened to her and how she could connect with him. during that speech, ryan is shown on the frame from naimās perspective. this somewhat clears up how naim feels about ryanā it was never sheer curiosity, a hookup, or a half-joke, it was genuine sense of safety and comfort. until, that comfort is shattered by;
shame disguised as horror
shame haunts. it runs after you, leaves a permanent cut that scars your brain and never heals. itās a personal feeling that belittles and consumes you wholy, much like the entity. yet, the entity not only feeds out of fear; but also out of love and attraction. we can really see it when naim instead of blatantly fighting the entity, he chooses to trick it with affectionā and it stops completely. he chooses to stop fighting his love, for a second, and the entity malfunctions. because love can defeat fear. it represents every ugly, flawed emotion that comes along with intense love and desire. it starts to lightly crush the relationship between ryanaim, as they both slowly start to be scared of eachother. whoās the real one? whoās the one i love, and the other one iām scared of? or maybe theyāre both?
another scene where queerness is represented as horror, and so as shame, is when naim goes to the police station to report hunterās death and ryan being in danger. he gets questioned by one of the authorities; she starts going on about how, sometimes, when things get too bad mentally and turn hard to accept, they can create denial and delusions that we use to cope, run away from and replace that feeling.
after that, naim starts talking about his past relationship with eva and how it amplified his fear. kind of random to bring up a girl after talking about a monster thatās out to get teenage boys, no?
except, that whole conversation was a perfect metaphor for how internalized homophobia feels. you donāt want to accept being queer, because how can you, when the world demonizes it so greatly? and so, your only option is to ignore that, try to mend yourself into someone youāre not and replace queerness with ānormalcyā. then you should be fine, but youāre not, because the truth still lives inside you. it can be ugly, saddening and painful, but itās the raw truth.
a motherās love
or more so, the lack of it.
naimās mother, even purely at the start, is shown as āplayfullyā mocking to naim and just feels shady. sheās also very, very religious and sees it as something wholly personal and absolute. as a parent, itās clear that she loves her son. but that love is tangled up in her beliefs, own fears and the inability to accept naim fully. that, as hinted in the movie, can be a result of generational trauma that lightly gets put on naim. that disorted love led her to making bad decisions and labeling it as something that āhad to be doneā. she knew the consequences of sending naim into the healing, but she also pushed them aside and proceeded with it anyway.
hatred so deeply engraved in someone can make a crack on love and break it. she thought she was doing the right thing, but that wasnāt the case, not at all. i took it as a great showcase of how, despite the church & christianity being presented as something kind and saving, itās destructive not only to a individual, but to a group; even with years of love and depth behind them.
but familiarity isnāt necessarily love. naimās mother was neglectful, didnāt particularly care about what naim had to say and never believed him, nor did she care about his troubles and fears. āwe need fear, naim.ā is the most we got out of her after scarring her son and making him live with the entity for the rest of his life.
as her ābeloved sonā comes to sleep next to her, awfully terrified because of his nightmares, she views it as him bothering her, left him completely alone and made him leave her room like itās something to be ashamed of, needing your mother. complicated relationship with your own parent like that only fed on the shame, which played an enormous part in naimās shame and insecurity.
i do wish their relationship was more developed, thatās for sure, but it still proved a clear point.
the light and rocks
what really caught my attention was the intention between the light and throwing rocks. if you watch the movie carefully, naim pre-āhealingā in the scene where he ā¦, has burning light behind him. that can be taken as a reminder that heās just like ryan and hunter, or also can be taken as a foreshadow that heās next in the process, and thatās inevitable.
at hunterās working place, when naim hides, we can see the word āiceā several times. i stopped and thought; ice is the opposite of fire. fire is intense, all-consuming and suffocating. itās also been used in the fights against entity.
which led me to a conclusion that not only it can hint at hunter having a totally different relationship with ryan than naim (which i will get to in a second), or how it can also symbolise his failure. he didnāt have the fire āin himā to fight against the entity, he felt defeated. hopeless. he didnāt have anyone that he could live for, precisely, in a romantic connection. thatās what led to his death, somehow. a little bit :)
now, this one is a pretty obvious one, but the boys throwing rocks at eachother also holds a meaning. in the bible, getting stoned is continuously used as a form of punishment. as in leviticus 20:13 it also is stated that lying with another man as a man is a sin and should be punished with a bloody death, you can just collide these two together. amazing religious symbolism from the director, really
and on a quick note, the snake at the beginning is supposed to represent temptation as itās also represented in the bible. ryan plays with it, not seeing the issue, while naim is scared and tells him to stop. a rather interesting way to show the contrast between naimās and ryanās beliefs.
naim vs. hunter
this segment is pretty clear in the movie. hunter and naim are completely separate personalities, different people with different approaches to life. hunter mirrors ryanās tendency towards violence, throwing the rocks, aggressively making out with him; no raw connection between them, just a desperate attempt at love.
while naim grants ryan with tenderness, delicate touches, softness and passion. he gets a unsual (for him) outlook on love and how it should really feel, which deepens his feelings at their core.
the bus scene
the bus scene is a very talked about topic, but personally, not for the right reason. itās not meant to be perceived as āhotā, itās a perfect, short performance that lays out ryanaimās acceptance for the audience beautifully.
couple of minutes before getting on to that bus, a girl tells them that being with eachother only deepens the entity and makes it worse for them both to bear. nonetheless, they push that thought aside and confidently express their love to eachother. harm doesnāt concern neither ryan nor naim, they both just crave eachother and thatās what matters most.
in addition to that, in a public transport. in a scenery that can ruin their lives and danger them. thereās not a moment when one says āwhat if someone sees us?āā no. itās their moment, their shared time and devotion. their realization of oneās feelings (ryan realising naim likes him back and vice versa because the entity takes the form of a person you like most) not only intensifies the scene, but makes it much more wholesome and full of emotions. theyāre giggling, smiling at each other,
theyāre safe in eachothers arms without a care in the world.
it never stops, but it gets better
the ending is one of my favourite 5 minutes of the film lol. naim finally chooses to fight both for himself and for ryan. he doesnāt comply to his mother, he leaves and finds ryan exactly where he thought he would be.
āplease tell me itās really youā with teary eyes that meet naimās, with a soft little smile. not only that, but after they get on the bus, naim still sees the entity. lurking at him, waiting. but even so, he doesnāt scream, heās not scared. instead he looks at ryan, reminding himself that heās there, with him, and so everything will be okay. he lays his head on ryanās shoulder, and ryan allows him. he lets naim share burdens on both of them. despite everything; every trauma, every fight, every pain, every wail, theyāre with eachother. and thatās what matters.
thank you for reading ts because it took me the wholedayā¦. also i love them somcuhuchcj and this movieeešššššššššššššš












