I’ve been talking to my dad about what the Entity could have been trying to do by putting his hand in Naim’s mouth. We’ve pretty much decided that it was going for Naim’s tongue, because of the bus scene.
In the bus scene, Naim licks Ryan’s ear. In the scene where Ryan gets tricked, his ear almost gets ripped off. So if the other Entity was going for Naim’s tongue…
So if I said the birds associated with Ryan (on his shirt, in the cage) is related to him boxing himself into Bandee and believing his life only exists inside the town (the bird on his shirt is sitting still, the bird is inside the cage), whereas the birds associated with Naim are always flying away in Naim’s drawings, because he wants to leave Bandee
As fucking angry as I am that this won’t be available outside of the US so I won’t be able to own this, I am fascinated by the two pages they’ve given us. It includes an extension of the slushy scene!!!! Excuse me????
I personally love the slushy scene as I’ve overwritten a ton about it, so I was super excited to see this.
On the left page of the promo, we only get two additional details. The first is this line from Ryan that got cut, “I want it Naim. I do.” So what does Ryan want? What’s Entity Naim been telling him? I can make an educated guess based off of the Photo Booth scene, where we get images of Ryan taking off his shirt, and the sound of Ryan telling Entity Naim to take his off too.
From the semi-private setting of the Photo Booth, to the way Naim shut things down in the first mill scene, to the bus scene, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what Ryan wants, and what Entity Naim has been tempting him with.
It’s during this conversation where Ryan reveals this that the slushy machine starts overfilling, spilling across the floor as they talk, which is what draws Arlene’s attention to him. Once Ryan’s gone, Arlene goes to Naim and asks him what’s going on with him. Naim is about to response, but Arlene interrupts him with :
“Cathy said someone’s hurting him. Ryan’s mum. She said he has bruises all up his back. Doesn’t know how he got him.”
During this scene, Ryan had a bruise on his arm too, proof of this piece of dialogue. We establish here that Ryan’s been visited by the Entity before— and specifically has hurt him before. So why does Ryan want it too, if this has already happened?
We can pull this back to Hunter and their relationship. Ryan probably thinks that ever since his exorcism, Naim has lost emotional interest in him, but not physical interest. So Ryan just takes the fact that Naim is hurting him in the promise of intimacy, just to be close to Naim, even if it’s not really him.
And back to the fact that this is the actual promo picture, instead of using a scene that made it all the way through to the final cut, they used this, which makes me even more fuckin jealous of Americans.
All I ask is that when some of you get this, you scan the pages and put them online for the rest of us💔
“Leviticus watch party!” And it’s just me pausing the movie every two minutes to explain something and then crying hysterically at the ending and then asking to watch it again
I hate how angry Izzie, Rod and Jacky were at Ryan and Naim after Hunter’s death. Like those are two kids… they didn’t make you call on the Deliverance Healer, it was your choice.
Ryan being gay isn’t a threat to your family, you’re the threat. Naim didn’t know you were going to fucking curse all the town gays, and was jealous and just acting like a kid.
In fact, Naim did more than any of them combined to try and save Hunter. No one believed Hunter except for Naim. No one was there for Hunter, except for Naim, even after his death. Izzie never once accepted Hunter for being gay, and that’s what killed him.
Yeah I know the grief has to be put somewhere but choosing two queer teenage boys? Rod was involved in Ryan’s exorcism too, where’s the guilt over that?
I like all the edits to Ethel Cain for Leviticus, but it’s starting to piss me off a bit. People actually think she suits Leviticus more than Frank Ocean???
Do people not listen to Self Control on loop and think “this could’ve played throughout the entire duration of the movie and it would’ve kept the same vibe the whole time”?
I feel like I see more of the Ethel Cain stuff here in tumblr which is great!! Still love her music!! But we need a bit more appreciation for Frank Ocean, considering the role his song plays in this movie
We all know about the inclusion of rock throwing/stoning is Hunter and Ryan’s relationship, but I’m honestly more interested about the role it plays in Naim and Ryan’s relationship instead
Rocks come up between them twice in the movie. Once in the mill scene and once in the forest scene. I still don’t know whether I believe that it actually was Ryan in the forest scene (unreliable narrator naim thank you) but this theory is going to work off of that, so if that pisses you off just skip that part.
The first thing Naim does when he gets to the mill is he throws a rock at the shelf to knock things off of it. At this point in the movie, Naim has no clue about Ryan and Hunter, so when Ryan turns back to Naim with that expression of shock on his face, it’s probably because of that.
Does he know about me and Hunter? Was he trying to hurt me?
But Ryan, my favourite toxic masculine, ends up deciding to top Naim, and pick up an even larger rock to throw. But the thing is, Naim and Ryan aren’t throwing the rocks at each other. They’re throwing them elsewhere in the mill. So with the consideration of Hunter and Ryan throwing them at each other, Naim and Ryan throwing them away feels like a deflection of some kind. The punchline to something that hasn’t even happened yet. It’s a second-watch representation of the way Naim and Ryan’s relationship works.
Naim and Ryan would never willingly actually hurt each other, under any context. But their relationship is one that can’t be devoid of violence, not just because of the Entities, but because of Bandee and the way it views queerness. Ryan and Naim throwing the rocks away is a symbol of defiance, and a symbol of their care for each other.
The other notable scene with rocks as an inclusion between them is the one during the climax of the film, right after the gas station, when Naim runs into Ryan in the forest. Like I said, I’m having trouble fully trusting that that’s actually the Entity. Maybe it’s getting really good at tricking me too, but whether it’s real Ryan or not, my feelings about this scene still stand.
Naim seems to think this is the real Ryan too, because unlike the Entity he’s already encountered, this Ryan looks terrified. He’s just as scared of getting close to Naim. Naim tries to tell him “it’s me,” but Ryan can’t trust that either. Ryan picks up the nearest rock and throws it at Naim.
Knowing Entity Naim is mirroring Hunter in a more gentle light (for example, meeting Ryan in his backyard like Hunter did) I wouldn’t say it’s ridiculous to assume that Entity Naim was throwing rocks at Ryan to hurt him. Ryan throwing the rock back at Naim during this scene was a retaliation.
Stoning is very often a punishment for queerness in most religious spaces, and Ryan throwing the rock fits with this. But instead of the rock being the punishment, Entity Naim himself is. The thing is, that was the real Naim.
And if we’re working off the idea that the Ryan in the forest that night was the Entity, that means that it decided the best way to hurt Naim was to harken back to Hunter, a reminder of the severity of his and Ryan’s relationship. One wrong move and they’ll end up dead. One wrong move and they’ll be stoning each other too.
Thinking about the use of water vs fire in Leviticus
When Naim goes to out Hunter and Ryan to Rod and Jacky, he is soaked from the rain. We know that the fire is used by the Deliverance Healer to trigger the ritual, and what puts out fire? Water. We also know fire is what hurts the Entities. Being covered in water is a double edged sword. While it serves as a cloak for Naim during the outing of Ryan and Hunter, it just puts him in a more vulnerable position overall.
In the opening scene, with Marnie and her entity, they’re in the shower together. With the water on her, there is no way for her to reach the fire that will hurt the entity. In the climax of the movie, when Naim traps the Entity, he uses fire against it.
Water and fire are both used for cleansing in religious context, and is used the same by the town of Bandee to punish the queer characters. The same way you’re baptized, you can drown in it. The same way the Deliverance Healer uses the flame, the entities are created.
Why is this important? I think this goes hand in hand with the ending. The Entities aren’t gone, but Ryan and Naim choose each other anyways.
It’s the choice to lay in a bathtub even though it may drown you and it’s the choice to sit by a campfire even though it may burn you. The choice to be queer even though it might hurt you.
Water and fire, both equally dangerous in some contexts, but can be beautiful in others
"im glad the bullying scene and ryan calling naim a fag was cut because it's character assassination and ryan would never say that" BOOOOO BOOOOOBOOOOO BOOOOO
"im glad the bullying scene and ryan calling naim a fag was cut because leviticus' story hinges on the fact the boys' love was stronger than the fear aiming to drive them apart and the film did not have the run time to convincingly justify ryan's initial cruelty and sell the audience on their feelings outweighing their fear" okay now im listening
Naim taking the snake ring and going back to the mill at the climax of the film is genuinely so important to his character growth.
Not even five minutes into the movie, we establish two of Naim’s fears— snakes and heights. He refuses to poke the snake that’s eating the frog, even getting increasingly nervous just in its presence, and when he and Ryan climb the mill, he’s delayed far behind, presumably because of his fear.
We know that Naim goes back to the mill with Ryan quite a few times, one of which is at the climax of the movie, where he goes alone. He’s even knocked off part of the structure by the Entity, making him fall. But Naim doesn’t falter. He even climbs back up and down out after.
Throughout the movie, we see Naim grow past more trivial things like that, considering the larger fear growing in him, but all of it is accomplished through Ryan himself. Naim from the beginning of the movie would have never taken Ryan’s snake ring.
But Naim has a third fear, also first established in the mill scene— his homosexuality. And conquering his fear of both snakes and heights were the result of trying to interact with Ryan. Ryan, who is quite literally the face of his homosexuality.
So by him taking the snake ring, he’s accepting the fear and wearing it on him. It’s not just a fear of snakes, it’s his fear of being queer. Tying this to his identity is irrefutable evidence of his identity, but never once does he take it off.
He sets the mill on fire to trap the Entity, silencing his fear of heights that manifested there. All while wearing the snake ring, and then finally choosing Ryan at the bus stop, even though he’s scared to
He never really grows past those fears, but he’s accepted them, and that brings him more comfort than losing the fear at all.
Arlene said “we need fear, it’s how we survive” and Naim has fear, and he might always have fear. But he doesn’t have terror anymore, and that’s more important to him
So what do we think Ryan’s interested in? of course outside of weed and Naim. I can only really name a handful of things that I think are like have something to do with him considering how little of his life we get to see
Like of course, maybe some lowkey bodybuilding for the sole purpose of showing off. And no one who has that many rings is just casual about them. Maybe urban exploring, to a certain degree, considering his introduction of the mill. After he was outed, he still left the house to get a slushy
I would say wrestling, but it also has some negative connotations to his queerness as well. He’s definitely interested in it though, whether it’s good for his mental health or not. Maybe watching it on tv at the very least
Ryan and naim kinda remind me of two cats wrestling/playfighting
My cats just started like playfighting, and one is a lot bigger and stronger than the other, and accidentally hurt him. Then he licked his head after and they went back to fighting
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