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According to Leave the World Behind, when Armageddon comes, it won’t arrive in the form of invading aliens or natural disasters. Instead, it will be our own paranoia that takes us down.
Based on Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel of the same name, this new thriller from writer-director Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot) presents a particularly prescient take on the apocalypse. Here, technological woes, troubling misinformation, and racial microaggressions collide for an all-too familiar cocktail of issues that remain prevalent even as the world comes crumbling down. Esmail delivers this unsettling brew with sleek style and an all-star cast — Julia Roberts! Mahershala Ali! Ethan Hawke! Myha’la! Yet despite Leave the World Behind‘s early thrills, its gradual loss of momentum leeches any suspense inherent in the film’s conceit, resulting in an apocalypse flick that is fine, but nowhere near as insightful as it thinks it is.
What is Leave the World Behind about?
Mahershala Ali, Myha’la, Farrah Mackenzie, and Julia Roberts in “Leave the World Behind.”
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
The film opens with a snap decision: Amanda Sandford (Julia Roberts) is tired of the world. (More precisely, she “fucking hate[s] people.”) To fix her fatigue, she’s rented a house in Long Island for a spontaneous family vacation.
But even as her chill college professor husband Clay (Hawke) drives the family out of Brooklyn, it’s clear that the Sandford clan has very little intention of actually taking the film’s title’s advice to heart and leaving the world behind. Amanda, who works in advertising, is tethered to a work call. Her and Clay’s children, Archie and Rose (Charlie Evans and Farrah Mackenzie), are locked into their own devices as well, playing games and streaming Friends.
The Sandfords’ getaway is off to an ominous start when an oil tanker runs aground on a nearby beach. Following that catastrophe, they face the ultimate inconvenience: The WiFi at their beautiful rental home is down! Amid signs that something isn’t quite right, the Sandfords maintain their creature comforts, stopping for Starbucks after their near-miss with the boat, then grilling burgers and hanging out by the pool.
The real reckoning begins with the arrival of two strangers claiming to be the owners of the house. George “G.H.” Scott (Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la) were in New York for a symphony performance when a massive blackout hit. Rather than risk being stranded in the city, they chose to come back home.
Even though there’s an overwhelming amount of evidence that George and Ruth are telling the truth, Amanda shifts into racially motivated distrust. “This is your house?” she asks George and Ruth, who are Black. The disbelief rankles Ruth, while Clay and especially George attempt to play peacekeepers. In order to appease Amanda, George and Ruth decide to sleep in the basement, ceding the rest of the house to the white Sandfords.
And so the stage is set for commentary on race and class, including how these barriers hold (or disintegrate) in the face of disaster. As rumors of cyberattacks and international turmoil filter through increasingly spotty WiFi, will the Scotts and Sandfords lean on one another for support? Or will they turn on each other in the name of self-preservation? Leave the World Behind loves to keep you guessing on that front, especially in tense confrontations between Amanda and Ruth. The film prefers to tiptoe around the issues of race and class instead of face them head on, letting them fester between the families as their impending doom pushes them toward breaking point. But that breaking point never comes: What we get is commentary without catharsis, more surface-level description than meaningful critique.
Leave the World Behind fixes one of the novel’s biggest problems — but runs into issues of its own on the way.
Julia Roberts in “Leave the World Behind.”
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
Speaking of a lack of catharsis, let’s talk about the apocalypse at the center of Leave the World Behind. Just like in Alam’s novel, this mysterious doomsday manifests in a series of strange events: the citywide blackout, herds of migrating animals, and a horrifying piercing sound with no clear origin.
In the book, the cause for these strange occurrences remains unknown. Alam holds the families (and the readers) at a frustrating distance, where there is once again no catharsis. The move feels smug in its vagueness, as if our desire for clarity cannot coexist with our understanding of the Scotts’ and Sandfords’ plight. (It also reads as a way for a “literary” novel to avoid fully engaging with genre fiction.)
Thankfully, the film fills in the blanks here, hitting us with explanations of cyberattacks and destabilization strategies. There is still some ambiguity, including disappearing news alerts and conflicting reports from various survivors. Still, we’re able to find a much firmer footing without sacrificing an ounce of the novel’s atmosphere of creeping dread.
However, the adaptation approach proves to be a double-edged sword. As Esmail reveals that George may know more than he lets on, we’re treated to monologue after monologue that emphasize over and over the film’s core themes about paranoia. Ali lends each scene enough gravitas and unease to keep them from getting stale, but the sense remains that these explanations are a result of Esmail over-course-correcting the novel’s weak points.
The harbingers of the apocalypse, when they’re shown, are fairly frightening. A plane crash and a mass of red pamphlets raining from a drone make for particularly staggering visuals. The same goes for the sight of a massive herd of deer lurking just out of sight of the house.
These images slowly begin to lose their punch as Leave the World Behind goes on — especially since a few of them are reused to diminishing effect. Esmail often cuts between each character exploring a different new horror to try to get the most bang out of the apocalypse’s buck. Unfortunately, these sequences often fizzle out instead of popping, a problem the arc of the entire film suffers from as well. Just because the Sandfords and the Scotts don’t know what the future holds doesn’t mean their story shouldn’t feature some kind of closure. Given that the film features otherwise stylish direction from Esmail and solid performances from the cast, this lack of interesting closure certainly isn’t the end of the world. It does, however, dull the edge of what could have been a much sharper, much more interesting apocalyptic vision.
Leave the World Behind is now streaming on Netflix.
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