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There’s a sense that everybody involved with Leave the World Behind, the new apocalyptic thriller on Netflix, wants a pat on the back for asking the Big Questions. Not content with merely making its point, delivering the requisite thrills and moving along, Leave the World Behind seems to suffer from a near-constant inferiority complex, as if being a B-movie isn’t enough. In its desperation for prestige — director Sam Esmail gives himself the rather narcissistic ‘written for the screen and directed by’ credit — it sacrifices the pulp at its core.
It’s never really clear if we’re meant to take anything in it seriously. The tone is borderline ridiculous when it isn’t super-serious — there’s no in-between. Julia Roberts plays Amanda, a misanthropic middle-aged woman who drags her husband, Clay (Ethan Hawke), and their two kids, for a weekend getaway in the countryside. As it turns out, they picked the perfect time to rent out a luxury home in the middle of nowhere, because mere hours after they’ve settled in, the world seemingly ends.
Among many other ominous portents, Amanda and Clay spot stray deer in the garden. Then, at the supermarket, she notices a man stocking up on supplies. At the beach, a massive oil tanker makes landfall in a rather thrilling early sequence that would’ve looked stunning on the big screen. A passenger airliner drops out of the sky; hundreds of self-driving Teslas run amok on the highway. The internet is down; they have no way of knowing what’s going on. It’s all very, very disconcerting.
That evening, a dapper-looking man and his teenage daughter show up at the door, and for a minute, it seems as if the movie is about to turn into a cross between Jordan Peele’s Us and M Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin. Amanda is instantly suspicious. Played by Mahershala Ali, the man claims to be the owner of the rental home; he was forced to return because of the blackout in the city. The unnecessary confusion out of the way — the movie seems to be very uncertain about milking the moment for some extra paranoia — the two families huddle up to plot their next move.
Leave the World Behind is at least 30 minutes too long. And it wouldn’t take a genius to identify the exact moments where it begins to lag. The first act is effective enough, and the finale is satisfying, if a little simplistic. But the middle sucks all the energy out of the narrative. As the two families join hands, Esmail takes his foot off the pedal, having semi-committed himself to fleshing these characters out a little more. He does this by forcing them to chit-chat with each other after clumsily dividing them into smaller groups. This goes on for what feels like 20 minutes.
But what the movie doesn’t understand is that we don’t really need to care about them individually in order to root for them to make it out of this nightmare; heck, it isn’t clear if we’re meant to root for them at all. For all intents and purposes, these six characters are meant to represent all of humanity for 140 minutes; they’re archetypes. And we would’ve gone along with this assumption had the movie not dedicated a significant chunk of the second act to perform a most unnecessary act of self-sabotage.
It’s not like Leave the World Behind was was always doomed to fail. If anything, the movie is unusually well-made. Esmail seems to be having a ball — in addition to the three major action set-pieces, each of which is spectacular, he can’t help but draw attention to his flashy filmmaking. The camera performs pirouettes as it reveals the layout of the luxury rental home; it takes an omniscient view as our protagonists run around in circles trying to make sense of it all; the framing, as has become Esmail’s signature, is immaculate. Why, then, does the movie never come together?
The style over substance approach aside, it’s probably because of Esmail’s curious creative decision to erase any sense of mystery surrounding these strange events. Everything, from the creepy omens to the loud sirens to the propaganda falling from the skies, is explained in rather unambiguous terms. Ingrained racism, our over-reliance on technology, and humanity’s self-destructiveness are ideas that the movie flirts with but never fully explores. But once it becomes clear that you aren’t meant to participate in the drama, and are instead expected to observe silently from a distance, you can help but shake your head in disappointment. What a shame. You were willing to lean in for a conversation, but the movie would rather you listen to its lecture.
Leave the World Behind comes from Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground banner — a bonkers bit of behind-the-scenes trivia, especially considering how well-mannered their past output has been, and how disdainfully this movie sees both the world and the people in it. You’d assume that they’d associate themselves only with ‘important’ stories with things to say about the human condition, but here they are, proudly stamping their names on a movie in which Julia Roberts yells at a horde of wild animals for three full minutes.
Leave the World Behind
Director – Sam Esmail
Cast – Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, Myha’la Herrold, Kevin Bacon
Rating – 2.5/5
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