LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND (2023) review

written by: Sam Esmail
produced by: Julia Roberts, Marisa Yeres Gill, Lisa Gillan, Sam Esmail & Chad Hamilton
directed by: Sam Esmail
rated: R (for language, some sexual content, drug use and brief bloody images)
runtime: 141 min.
U.S. release date: December 8, 2023 (Netflix)

Lately, Netflix has a thing for releasing post-apocalyptic thrillers around the end-of-year holiday season. As if viewers weren’t already stressed out enough during at that time of the year! Last year, there was the Dan DeLilo adaptation of “White Noise” and the year before that it was Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up”, both of which were comedy thrillers that leaned toward the satirical. Of course, there was “Birdbox” which became a huge hit when it dropped in December 2018, and was followed by a sequel that landed on Netflix this past summer. Now we have “Leave the World Behind”, in which writer/director Sam Esmail (“Mr. Robot” creator ) adapts the novel of the same name from Rumaan Alam about a global crisis that came out in October 2020, when the U.S. and the rest of the world was already in a heightened sense of awareness due to COVID-19. The result is a frustrating and uneven approach to a “What If?” psychological thriller, which found me defaulting to my “the book must be better” stance.

The modern-day story starts off by introducing us to the Sandfords, an affluent family of four living in Brooklyn. We first meet Amanda (Julia Roberts) and her husband Clay (Ethan Hawke) in their bedroom. It is a bright morning in their high-rise home and a groggy Clay is awakened by manic Amanda, who’s been up for a while and reveals that she has booked a Airbnb for their family in Long Island for an impromptu weekend beach house getaway. Why? Because she looked out their window and saw the bustling people below and thought to herself, “I f*cking hate people!”

Considering she’s already done the packing for them, Clay sees no point in a rebuttal and agrees to the trip, stating it’s been a while since they all traveled as a family. With their two teen children, Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) and Archie (Charlie Evans), glued to tech devices, the family sets off for some secluded time away from everyone else. As they get close to the destination, Rose is frustrated that she’s unable to watch the final episode of “Friends” on her tablet. When they stop at a nearby market, Amanda notices a bearded man (it’s Kevin Bacon, so we’ll see him later on) stockpiling his pick-up truck with canned goods and bottled water. She still hates people, but her suspicions are aroused.

Right away, we know that this will be one of those movies where the audience will know what’s happening or what’s about to happen long before any of the characters do. Once that element is acknowledged the key thing is how the characters in the movie will be responding to their newfound situations. As “Leave the World Behind” unfolds, we definitely learn more about the main characters that will populate the screen, however it’s not enough to go on. Their behavior winds up being quite frustrating and more perplexing than what is transpiring around them.

Upon their arrival at the lavish rental, the Sandfords learn the internet is out and they’re not receiving any cell signals. That sounds idyllic to me, but to be honest, we can only last technologically untethered for a finite time. Rose shares her frustration that she’s unable to watch the last episode of “Friends”. So, the entire family decide to walk to the nearby beach and relax. When an oil tanker on the horizon sails closer and closer and a rapid clip, Rose is the first one to voice concern. It takes the massive vessel crashing into the sandy shore right in front of them for Amanda and Clay to register that something is definitely off.

Odd events continue later that night when Amanda and Clay hear a knock at their front door. Curious and cautious, they open the door to find the owner of the home, George H. Scott (G.H.) and his daughter, Ruth (Myha’la), standing there dressed in formal wear. G.H. (Mahershala Ali) apologizes for the intrusion, stating he is the owner and explains that he and his have driven from New York City due to a blackout. The loss of power prevented G.H. from climbing stairs to his home downtown due to his bad knee. He offers to refund 50% of their cost in exchange for allowing them to stay in the furnished basement level for the night. Amanda buys none of it and remains suspicious, telegraphing her own latent racism towards the black father and daughter, something that Ruth picks up on immediately. Clay is more accepting of their story, seeing no reason for them to lie and as sparse information begins to surface, the two families do what they can to figure out what’s going on in America.

The immediate problem with “Leave The World Behind” is that I was more interested with what was going on with the world than I was with the family that we start off with. Roberts is great at playing an unlikable misanthrope who distrusts everyone, but right away she feels nauseatingly one-dimensional. Amanda is dismissive towards her husband and has no real connection with her kids. But really, there’s not much to either her character or Hawke’s Clay, both of whom are assigned woefully one-dimensional and stereotypical roles. The actors playing their kids aren’t given any better material to work with. Rose and Archie are typical teens who lose themselves in technology or wander off on their own without telling anyone.

When one of the teens falls ill, G.H. and Clay drive over to Kevin Bacon’s property to seek help. Turns out he’s Danny, a local contractor who worked on G.H.’s place. When they arrive, the two become unwanted guests, greeted by a shotgun-toting survivalist spouting predictable garbage about online chatter and microwave weapons. Bacon is worthy of a more developed role that would offer more than the one-dimension that the screenplay provides.

In fact, not one of these actors are given any room for nuance and unfortunately Roberts comes across as the most annoying one-note character out of all of them. She’s the uptight entitled white woman who has a hard time withholding her racism. Her pseudo micro-aggressive attacks toward Ruth are eye-rolling and her overall attitude toward anyone but her kids is grating. There’s an odd unearned moments where Roberts and Ali’s characters are playing music from his vast vinyl collection (most impressive!) where Amanda starts to see G.H. as an actual person and they even embrace, but it just doesn’t feel like we got to such a moment naturally. It’s an attempt to show a layer of humanity for Amanda, but by then it’s too late.

There’s also this whole superfluous thing going on with nature, specifically deer. It can’t even be called a subplot, but it’s where seemingly hundreds of deer show up on or near the Smith property. At first, they’re only seen by Rose. She’s the type of young kid who complains that nobody listens to her, so she sees no point in going on about the strange appearance. Esmail the writer goes nowhere with the curious animal behavior and Esmail the director just seems to get a kick out of highlighting his visual effects team. If anything, it gives Roberts a meme-worthy moment of going bug-nuts towards a gathering of CGI deer. It goes nowhere except to provide spectacle – well, at least the first curious appearance. No amount of “Explained” articles online can justify these scenes and if you have to read such write-ups to understand why something was included in a movie then something’s not right.

There are not-so-subtle reminders of our reliance on technology in “Leave the World Behind”, (including an unintentionally funny scene involving self-driving vehicles) but not enough to say anything new or different on the subject. One would think that more time could be devoted to trying to understanding each other as the world seemingly collapses, but the story here is more interested in dropping “Death to America” leaflets from the sky and subjecting the characters to ear-piercing sound waves, than developing any type of real human connection.

This is the first thriller produced by Michelle and Barack Obama’s Higher Ground Productions as part of their partnership with Netflix that began in 2018. They’ve done a documentary on National Parks, a drama on the Civil Rights movement, and another documentary asking Americans to look at the way in which they live. This movie tries for the latter and maybe it’s a bit too ambitious. It certainly could’ve taken a sharper look at the dysfunction of America, rather than just blow it all up.

RATING: **