LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND…
Written by Ellis La Mai
If you were left in a post-apocalyptic situation with no internet, no transport and no hope for a saving grace, what would you do? You’re probably having some extremely noble thoughts but what would you ACTUALLY do? That’s what Sam Esmail wishes to answer in his newest film Leave the World Behind.
Coming off a critically acclaimed TV show, Mr. Robot, running from 2015 to 2019 over 4 seasons, Esmail sets his sights on the world of feature filmmaking with the backing of Netflix and the Obamas… Barack and Michelle, you heard that correctly.
Leave the World Behind, adapted from a 2020 novel of the same name follows Amanda (Julia Roberts) and Clay (Ethan Hawke), a middle-aged couple New York City-based couple who decide to take themselves and their two children out of the city into a rented house on Long Island. Finding themselves in a communications blackout with the Wi-Fi and TV signal gone, two people knock at their door; a black man named G.H Scott (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la Herrold) claiming to be the owners and asking for shelter. The plot moves along as our characters learn about their situation and more about themselves as they remain isolated from the world.
If anyone knows anything about Sam Esmail, it’s his formalism. The unique direction of Mr. Robot rivalled and still rivals the proficiency in mainstream Hollywood films. That’s no different in Leave The World Behind, even with the direction aimed in a more pop area, Esmail seems more in tune with Spielbergian thrills with how his camera moves with longer takes going from close-up to medium to wide and the particular and off-kilter soundtrack choices, the film feels dynamic and like a pure thrill ride in its set pieces. The mystery of the conditions of the world and the motivations of the characters themselves feels akin to early M. Night Shyamalan. He also commands an excellent cast including Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke and Myha’la Herrold, the first 3 are as good as you expect with all their accolades and various contributions to cinema over the past 3 decades but Myha’la Herrold holds her own against these giants with her sarcastic Gen-Z representative character, anyone familiar with her work in BBC and HBO’s Industry won’t be surprised by this but with this film getting a grand rollout into a Netflix release I guess many will be.
Where Leave the World Behind falters is in its grander posturing and pace, although it is a thriller with exciting sequences, the film has a lot of long and character-focused moments. By no means is this a problem but after a 140 min runtime, there isn’t any sense of specificity related to the group I’d spent this time with and this problem leaks into the wider social commentary it attempts as each character enacts certain western world traits from individualism, nihilism, racism, fixation on media, reliance on convenience and technology and even consumerism as the film smartly uses product placement from the likes of Tesla and Starbucks to get its point across. But none of these critiques are weaved together or even make enough of an impression on the narrative to fully give the audience the reckoning moment it wants them to have, due to the film not directly pointing a finger at anything but leaving it at a vague portrayal of America and its inhabitants.
Leave the World Behind isn’t as purely constructed as Esmail’s previous work in television but yet brings an entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking thriller to Netflix this Christmas season. It’s big and loud when it needs to be and Esmail has created a cast and character dynamics which are entertaining enough to hold in the downtime between these moments but his script doesn’t reach deep enough to create the resonance he wants.
Leave the World Behind is out now on Netflix.
