The Sundance Film Festival has a history of introducing the world to some of the greatest horror movies ever to come to screens, from The Blair Witch Project to American Psycho, Ari Aster‘s Hereditary, and Jordan Peele‘s Get Out. In 2026, there was once again a singular breakout hit with critics that’s now about to arrive in theaters — Leviticus. An LGBTQ+ coming-of-age horror romance hailing from Australia, the film was widely hailed for the emotional relationship at its center, combined with an eerie atmosphere and a unique monster premise that plays to its leads’ desires. Ahead of its arrival next month, we’re thrilled to include the title as part of Collider’s Exclusive Summer Preview and share a chilling new sneak peek from the film.
Leviticus is led by Joe Bird, previously seen in Danny and Michael Philippou‘s smash-hit feature debut Talk to Me, and Stacy Clausen, who most recently starred in the Phoebe Dynevor-led disaster thriller Thrash at Netflix. They play star-crossed teenage boys, Naim and Ryan, who are magnetically attracted to each other amid their blossoming sexuality, yet are confronted with religious fanaticism in their isolated Australian town, trying to purge them of their feelings for one another. Their lives take an even darker turn, however, when they are haunted by a malevolent supernatural entity that dons the visage of the person they most desire. For Naim and Ryan, that person is each other, and they quickly realize that no matter where they run, there’s no stopping the entity from pursuing them.
Adrian Chiarella both wrote and directed the film in his feature debut, aiming to show horrors both frighteningly and unfortunately real in addition to its creative It Follows-esque monster. Speaking to Collider’s Perri Nemiroff at Sundance, he explained how his story was partly shaped by the true accounts of frightening practices, from conversion therapy to exorcisms, employed to “cure” LGBTQ+ people of their feelings, which he believed “sounded like a horror movie.” The result is a creepy, yet sensual film that plays on desire and the persistence of queer love in the face of hatred. Yet, when he started fleshing everything out, Chiarella realized he needed to create a central creature that reflected and enhanced these themes.
Advertisement
“But when I started writing and started doing good old-fashioned free writing and sitting there with the pen and paper and just writing to myself about what I wanted to do and what I wanted to explore, it clicked for me when I knew that I had to find a monster to do a horror movie. Every horror movie has some sort of monster, whether it’s a physical one or a metaphorical one, or it’s a natural thing. I knew that the monster in this had to be something that took the form of what you most desired. It had to prey on your own desires. When I knew that, then I knew I had a film.”
Advertisement
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
Advertisement
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
Advertisement
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
Advertisement
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
Advertisement
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
Advertisement
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
Advertisement
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
Advertisement
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
Advertisement
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
Advertisement
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Advertisement
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Advertisement
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
Advertisement
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
Advertisement
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
Advertisement
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
Advertisement
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
Advertisement
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
Advertisement
‘Leviticus’ Adds Another Horror Hit to NEON’s 2026 Lineup
Upon debuting Leviticus, Chiarella found a big fan in NEON, which quickly snapped up the much-lauded feature for release. The indie banner is having a strong start to the year as far as its horror efforts are concerned, delivering what’s been hailed as one of the best horror game adaptations ever made in Exit 8 and the much-anticipated third feature from Damian McCarthy, Hokum. Aboard their latest acquisition, in addition to Bird and Clausen, are Jeremy Blewitt, Ewen Leslie, Davida McKenzie, Nicholas Hope, Zamira Newman, and Mia Wasikowska. Causeway Films, the production company behind Talk to Me and another standout Sundance premiere, The Babadook, backed Leviticus.
Leviticus bows in theaters in the U.S. on June 19. Check out our exclusive sneak peek above and stay tuned here at Collider throughout the rest of the week for more new looks at the hottest upcoming films from our summer preview series.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login