What if the object of your desire was also the thing that’s trying to kill you? Not slowly irritating you to death for leaving the toilet seat up again. We mean actively trying to strangle you.

That’s the intriguing premise behind the horror-satire “Leviticus,” an auspicious feature film debut for writer-director Adrian Chiarella that’s both deeply scary and a queer revolt.

Named for the book of the Old Testament often used to justify homophobia, the movie explores the burgeoning relationship between two young men that is shattered when so-called “conversion therapy” — a scientifically discredited practice — unleashes a demon that stalks them. Some have called the movie “It Follows” meets “Heated Rivalry,” but that’s a disservice to Chiarella’s ambition.

The film centers on Naim (Joe Bird, the breakout star of A24’s “Talk to Me” )and Ryan (newcomer Stacy Clausen), who we watch fitfully, awkwardly fall for each other, slowly exploring their sexuality and stutter-stepping into their true selves. Wrestling turns to flirtation, which becomes longing and tenderness.

That doesn’t go over well in the small Australian town where the movie is set, a blue-collar community with belching smoke stacks, low-slung houses, barking dogs and a Christian pastor — with a “deliverance healer” — who prefers his flock much more heterosexual.

Chiarella is leaning not only into the notion that sexual desire makes you vulnerable, but also the harm that repressing who you are can do. In this case, the demon takes the form of your crush. It has weaponized lust.

“You shouldn’t be near me. I shouldn’t be near you, either,” one of the would-be lovers says to the other.

Chiarella starts his movie with a nod to Alfred Hitchcock — a shower scene worthy of “Psycho” — and nods to others in the genre, like “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” He can be a bit clunky with his images — a frog being eaten by a snake — but his pacing is flawless and his ramping up of terror is sure. “Leviticus” might be an indie film, but it’s got the blessing of Frank Ocean, who gave the filmmakers the right to use his song “Self Control.”

The monsters — in addition to the nasty one only the boys can see, of course — are the adults: the parents and caregivers and friends who turn on vulnerable, scared young men and make them scared of each other. Mom might kindly take some disliked olives off her son’s pizza, but she won’t accept him kissing another boy.

Chiarella’s pro-queer filmmaking extends to his ability to perfectly capture the fumbling ecstasy of new love, the fierce longing of stolen kisses and how scary it is to submit to a new partner. Kudos to Bird and Clausen for capturing that universal feeling.

With his film, Chiarella forms a triumvirate of young filmmakers making horror brilliant in summer 2026, alongside Curry Barker with “Obsession” and Kane Parsons’ “Backrooms.” The future of movies is in good hands.

“Leviticus,” a Neon release that’s in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “bloody violent content, language, some sexual content and teen drug use.” Running time: 88 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

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Over eons of mythmaking, the 13th century bandit Robin Hood has evolved from a scamp adored by King Henry VIII to a symbol of sticking it to the rich. He’s been called a thief, a benefactor, a commoner, a lord, a killer and a hero. During the Great Depression, Robin was a dashing champion of the people. At the height of the Red Scare, he was a Communist threat; then, in the ‘70s, a sexy cartoon fox. But never until Michael Sarnoski’s “The Death of Robin Hood,” which imagines the folk legend as a benumbed mass murderer, has this outlaw been duller than the rock piles he builds to bury his corpses.

Hugh Jackman plays Robin Hood in his final days, a loose retelling of a 500-year-old ballad, and seems to have ancient dirt creased into his wrinkles. Injuries and exhaustion have him aching to retire. Yet the family members of his casualties won’t let him quit. Out of duty to their bloodlines, these vengeful mourners — even the grandchildren of his victims — continue attempting to assassinate him even though he doesn’t remember, or care about, their beloved dead. Robin is enduring a nightmare version of a party at which every unfamiliar face huffily claims they’ve met you before. It’s relatable, except for the throat-slitting.

This savage, amoral and unfeeling Robin Hood has been written to invert everything modern fans like about him. He doesn’t wear green. He doesn’t sport a feather. He’s never loved a Maid Marian. He doesn’t even romp around a forest with a pack of merry men. Instead, he starts the film on a barren mountaintop, alone. (Similarly, Jim Ghedi’s transporting score has the sound of traditional ballads like “Silver Dagger” splintering apart mid-verse to reassemble as funeral hymns.)

From his gray hair to limping stride, Jackson’s Robin is so battered by decades of violence and outdoor camping that, at first glance, I thought his bare feet were a pair of alligator boots. Filmed in Northern Ireland, the landscapes are cold, green and formidable (if muted by too much mist). The first shot has a miserable grandeur: a frigid landscape, frozen berries and wind so strong it nearly blows a starving traveler sideways. Shortly after, cinematographer Pat Scola’s overhead view of a makeshift cemetery is a stunner.

Sarnoski has D.W. Griffith’s flair for visceral imagery. His favorite trick is to have us empathize with a close-up of a desperate, vulnerable character and then have Robin brutally mow them down. There’s even a scene of Robin crushing a bunny. You can hear the crunch.

“I robbed and killed for the joy of it, nothing more,” Robin grunts to strangers who hail him as the protector of the meek. Over the course of the running time, he’ll reconnect with Little John (Bill Skarsgård) and befriend a leper (Murray Bartlett), a traumatized young man (Noah Jupe), an angry little girl (Faith Delaney) and a kindly nun-slash-nurse (Jodie Comer) who is so blindingly clean that it’s distracting. He also visits a religious commune and witnesses actual generosity only to remain apathetic about repentance or emotional growth.

It’s a tedious spin on a Wolverine movie Jackman has already made, 2017’s “Logan,” in which his mythic anti-heroic X-Man fosters a ferocious moppet en route to the grave. Lately, I’ve come to prefer Jackman as a showman over a savage. (Many stars can scowl, few can tap dance.) But he looks the part — Jackman has a commendable willingness to recede inside himself — even though after the rousing opening, the script gives him almost nothing to do.

The screenplay’s dirge-like momentum is ironic as Sarnoski has set out to make a movie itself about storytelling. You can tell because of the multiple monologues that kick off with someone asking Robin if he’s ever heard that story about so-and-so and forcing the movie to halt while we listen.

From Robin’s experience, he thinks that “stories can make men do terrible things,” perhaps thinking of all those bereaved family members who were honor-bound to chase after him and get themselves killed. Violence metastasizes. In the medieval era, blood feuds carried on for generations; likewise, today’s wars are often rooted in centuries of pain. Robin doesn’t tell tall tales himself except once and when he does, you can understand why, but not why one listener in particular goes along with it.

But he does have an opinion on how to spin a good yarn. When Little John struggles to describe his dream girl, Robin instructs his protegee to sketch an image with words.

“She had red hair like —” Robin prompts in the manner of a stern third-grade teacher.

“Fresh blood!” Little John blurts.

A hyperactive psychopath, Skarsgård’s Little John is one of the movie’s rare treats. The other is the agonizingly good stunt coordination by Julian Spencer that makes men slide in the mud frantically trying to grab and snap each other’s fingers.

“The Death of Robin Hood’s” one big idea is compelling: History gets written and erased in real time. Characters rarely agree on what happened to whom and frankly, I’m still unsure if one of the father-daughter relationships in here is biological or just pretend. (The cast’s mush-mouthed accents don’t help.) Even today, a time where the slipperiness of facts is a known risk, sticky fables endure — pizza-parlor cabals, dog-eating immigrants, gerbils stuck wherever.

We still hail Robin Hood as an inspirational hero who stole from the rich to give to the poor, forgoing alternate versions in which Robin robs a monk, keeps the money, then kills a dozen men to cover up the crime. But during a week when the canted economy just created its first trillionaire, I can’t fathom why Sarnoski felt we needed this version of Robin Hood now. Disillusionment aside, what’s the point of a Robin Hood who insists on standing for nothing?

Sarnoski is a promising talent with two previous features on his resume: “Pig,” a feral $3-million thriller starring Nicolas Cage, and “A Quiet Place: Day One,” a smart franchise prequel. It’s understandable he wanted to split the difference and make a midsize indie that feels all his, to prove himself with the kind of solemn period picture that people take seriously. He’s earned the right to ask financiers and his building fan base for their trust.

But “The Death of Robin Hood” feels like a director thinking only of his ambitions and not whether he’s making a movie anyone wants to bother to see. The lesson is right there in the film: Audiences decide what gets remembered.

Gunmetal gray sky, barren muddy terrain, a half-starved child begging a wizened title character for a scrap of food moments before he slashes her throat. It’s hardly the opening you imagine for a film about a folk hero — especially one who robs the rich and gives to the poor. But then, The Death of Robin Hood is the brainchild of Michael Sarnoski (Pig, A Quiet Place: Day One), so maybe leave expectations in the lobby.

Sarnoski gives us Hugh Jackman’s battle-scarred, gray-bearded Robin as a tormented wretch, not the brash strapping outlaw of legend — alone, wracked by regret over the countless lives he’s ended or ruined. When we meet Robin in 1247 A.D., he seems pursued as much by his own guilt as by avenging relatives of the innocents he murdered in younger days (say, that half-starved but surreptitiously knife-clutching little girl).

So he tries to beg off when Little John (Bill Skarsgård, unrecognizable) approaches him with the promise of one more “adventure” — to rescue the wife John’s claimed after killing her husband, from the neighbors who then rescued her from John. Robin notes correctly that she’s not really John’s wife, yet he reluctantly brings his quiver, and an arm that can still shoot an arrow through a skull and out an eye socket at 50 paces.

He proves formidable, but not immortal. This “adventure” leaves him gravely wounded, dragged across forbidding terrain to a remote, cliff-top convent, where a prioress (Jodie Comer) with a curative touch and a marginally gentler way with a knife will attempt to bleed him back to health.

Sarnoski’s indie-realist approach to blood-letting — whether Pitt-ishly clinical, or Game of Thrones-esque in its brutality — is never less than arresting, and Jackman’s certainly up for the gore, extinguishing his torch in one opponent’s mouth and burying a hatchet in another’s back.

But it’s in the film’s later stages, where the character grapples with what his youthful righting of wrongs has cost both him and bystanders, that the actor and this medieval thriller find their emotional footing. Sarnoski is exploring the way we edit and augment the tales we tell about ourselves as we pass through the world, noting that hedges and embellishments will ultimately be laid bare.