Plot
Small Town Energy
One of the things this film gets right is the feeling of living somewhere where everyone seems to know everyone else's business, as while nobody feels openly hostile, you feel this constant sense that people are paying attention, making judgements, and sticking to ideas they've held for years.
The town itself isn't presented as some terrible place though, but the problem is that everyone seems locked into a certain way of thinking, and stepping outside of that comes with consequences, whether people say it outright or not, so that atmosphere hangs over pretty much every scene, even when nothing particularly threatening is happening, the film still manages to give you this feeling that people are being watched, evaluated, and quietly pushed back into line.
Main Performances
At the center of the story though is the relationship between the two leads, and it's easily the most engaging part of the film, where neither of them always knows what to say or do, but their connection is uncertain, with moments where they're clearly drawn to each other, followed almost immediately by moments of frustration, confusion, or distance.
Neither actor goes over the top, which helps, with one carrying a lot of vulnerability, while the other has a more guarded energy that makes it hard to tell exactly what they're thinking from one moment to the next, but a lot of the emotional beats land because of the reactions of those two.
The film also avoids spelling everything out, and it makes you learn about them through how they act around each other rather than through long conversations explaining exactly how they feel, and because of that, the emotional side of the story carries fairly well - just two people trying to work things out while dealing with everything else happening around them.
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Horror Elements and Supernatural Tension
The central horror concept also stays pretty interesting throughout, without it needing endless explanations, with the idea tapping into something personal, which gives the threat a different feel from a lot of more straightforward horror films, where the film creates this sense that private thoughts and feelings are no longer entirely private.
Later on, it leans a bit more into familiar horror territory however, and while those scenes are perfectly fine, but they're also the moments where the film feels least distinctive, as the ideas behind the horror are generally more interesting than the scares themselves.
Themes of Religion, Identity and Social Pressure
But what interested me most wasn't necessarily the horror at play here, it was simply the way the film keeps returning to the idea of expectations and control, the sort that comes from communities, traditions, and social pressure, the feeling that certain choices are acceptable while others aren't, and that theme runs through almost every part of the story, where it often ends up being more unsettling than the supernatural elements as mentioned, so the horror here is simply another way of exploring those ideas rather than the entire point of the film, which I liked.
A Couple of Issues
While I enjoyed the film overall, I did have some issues, and the biggest one was that the film didn't always know when to move on from an idea, as certain horror beats come back a few too many times, with stretches where the story feels like it's revisiting the same emotions instead of pushing things forward, and a couple of the more conventional scare moments also don't land particularly well either.
Final Thoughts
Leviticus is uneven in places, and feels a little repetitive at times, but its at its strongest when it focuses on people rather than scare attempts, with the atmosphere feeling particularly uncomfortable at times, and it ends up as a film more about wanting to make you think and feel uneasy rather than much else, and it does that job pretty well.