Leave the World Behind hits Netflix just in time for families to gather, settle in and watch a doomsday film with a relatively realistic premise and political ties to keep the arguments flowing. The film is based on a 2020 novel by the same name, written by Rumaan Alam. Just what we needed in 2020, a disaster novel to escape from the disaster world we were living in. This film plays on the suspense of the world altering events, causing signal failure and city wide blackouts. They really lean into the human aspect of this scenario, by focusing in on two families stuck together by chance.
Amanda (Julia Roberts), Clay (Ethan Hawke), Archie (Charlie Evans) and Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) escape the buzz of New York city to an incredibly expensive looking AirBnB, complete with swimming pool, locked alcohol cabinet and a creepy amount of deer loitering the outskirts of the property. Not far into their vacation, G.H Scott (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha'la) knock at the front door, claiming they are the original owners and needed to stay because the city has been hit by power issues. The family are skeptical of these two, not trusting them fully even though they are also having problems connecting their phones or TVs to the internet.
The two groups are at odds of who to trust and what to believe, creating a tension and suspension between them that can be understood in a few ways, possibly completely rational or potentially racist prejudice from Amanda.
The film likes this aspect of itself, bleeding into most of the elements, where you have many possibilities of what things are, motives of people and their true intentions. I think the possible racism is the most prevalent one that plays through the beginning of the film, making you question your own feelings and how you would react in the situation this family finds themselves in. Is Amanda being protective of her family regardless of prejudice or does she have feelings towards G.H and Ruth that stem from bias. The film leaves you with a lot of these questions, and I think some people can be soured with its many mysteries and few conclusions to them. I personally found the suspense to be articulated well, creating so many unknowns that you don’t exactly know what to cling on to, but you are hooked on trying to figure it out before it's revealed to you.
Adding to the suspense is the stylistic camera work, which basically hits shuffle on how to shoot a scene, gliding, panning, tilting and angling in the most off the wall ways. It has some really intricate movements through a scene that just looks like it comes with so much rehearsal and preplaning. In a film like this, coupled with the haunting, tense music, the camera style works out really well. Keeping things dynamic and interesting while you lose your mind on why there is a pile of leaves in the shed or where all the deer came from.
I may have exaggerated the “shuffle” element of the camera work because it does know when to calm down on the maximalist shots, allowing for some longer conversations to play out with classic over the shoulders, knowing that the content of the conversation is intriguing enough for us to latch on to.
The performances in this film are commendable. I think everyone does a good job with the role, in particular Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali who hang most of the story on their characters, from the questions of honesty to the questions of intent. Julia Roberts plays her character with subtlety, never pushing it too far into one or the other direction, making sure we as the audience keep her character at arms length, not knowing if we should be on her side. Mahershala Ali approaches his character with a quiet confidence in himself, but also doesn’t push too far, allowing those doubts that Amanda has to creep into our heads to, about G.H’s honesty.
Leave The World Behind is not going to change lives with its story but is a perfect conversation starter in the technology apocalypse genre and “what would you do” in this situation. It doesn’t strive to answer the questions it poses but satisfied me enough with its mystique and interesting technical approach, that I was entertained my entire watch through and looking for more once it finished. I have seen a lot of online chit chat about the ending and for some it was lackluster considering the build up in the early stages. I disagree that it’s an unsatisfying ending but understand that people may build up the hunger for answers while watching and be let down if some of those don’t get resolved.
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