Leave the World Behind

Adapted from Rumann Alam’s bestselling novel of the same name, Sam Esmail’s (Mr Robot) Leave the World Behind sees Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke star as Amanda and Clay Sandford, a wealthy New York couple who decide to rent a luxurious mansion in the Hamptons for a spontaneous getaway with their two children. Not long after arriving, however, things start to get increasingly strange. Internet and phone signals go down, the TV stops working and they witness an oil tanker crash into the beach. Things only get weirder when two strangers show up at the door that night. They are George (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la), who claim to be the home’s owners.

Completely cut off from the world around them, both characters and viewers only get fragmented snippets of information about the suspected cyberattack that’s thrown the country into chaos. Esmail smartly plays with this ambiguity to sustain an atmosphere of unease, which carefully intensifies as the group’s situation grows more severe. There’s no concrete explanation for why vast numbers of deer are spotted near the house, who (if anyone) sleeps in a creepy shed in the neighbouring forest or what the text on flyers dropped from a drone means, and the film’s all the better for it.

Elevating the drama are exceptional performances from the central cast. As wonderful as Roberts and Hawke are, it’s Ali who consistently steals the show, with audiences hanging onto every word of his foreboding monologues. However, the screenplay doesn’t have that much to say about its core themes.

For the majority of its over-two-hour-runtime, this film ruminates on how useless humanity would be without technology, and how terrible they are to each other. While this predominately consists of disaster scenarios of what could happen when things go wrong, there are a handful of scenes that dig a little deeper into our relationship with technology. One such moment reflects on our desire for escapism as the Sandford’s youngest daughter is left devastated about not being able to finish the last episode of Friends, a running plot point which has a surprisingly cathartic payoff.

Although incredibly well acted and directed, Leave the World Behind, unfortunately, doesn’t have that much new to say about its topic that other films haven’t covered before.

Andrew Murray

Leave the World Behind is released in select cinemas on 24^th November and on Netflix on 8^th December 2023.

Watch the trailer for Leave the World Behind here: