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On December 8, Netflix presented the psychological thriller “Leave the World Behind” to viewers. This is a film adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s bestseller of the same name, which appeared on bookstore shelves in 2020 and received mostly positive reviews from literary critics. In the review below, we tell you how this screen adaptation from the studio of Barack and Michelle Obama turned out.

Pros:

interesting injection of the atmosphere of hopelessness; interesting interaction of characters, which is also achieved thanks to confident acting reincarnations; an intriguing plot supported by high-quality special effects; good technical execution in general

Cons:

in the second half of the film, the revs decrease somewhat, and this slump should be shortened; not all declared topics have time to fully reveal themselves

“Leave the World Behind” / Leave the World Behind

Genre psychological apocalyptic thriller
Director Sam Esmail
In roles Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, Kevin Bacon, Michael Herrold
Premiere Netflix
Graduation year 2023
Site IMDb

New York. It was a beautiful, clear morning that promised a pleasant summer day. Nothing predicted trouble. Advertising executive Amanda Sandford woke her husband, Clay, to inform her of a spontaneous decision to spend the weekend at the Long Island cottage she had just rented. Together with their teenage children, Archie and Rose, the couple packed up and set off on holiday in good spirits.

Having reached their destination, the Sandfords were delighted to have such a luxurious, secluded house at their disposal. But the alarm bell rang during the very first trip to the beach: a huge oil tanker was getting closer and closer to the shore, until it became clear that it was not going to stop. Even the local deer behave somehow too defiantly.

But the worst was waiting for vacationers ahead, when in the middle of the night two strangers will appear at the door of the house and shock them with the statement that this house belongs to them. Due to the blackout in the city, they were forced to return here. Amanda was suspicious of this intrusion, but no one present could imagine that the lack of telephone connection, the Internet and only one modest message on TV about a state of emergency was the result of something terrible.

The plot of “Leave the World Behind” is based on the successful novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam. There, the author often allowed himself detailed descriptions, for example, of shopping in a supermarket. Probably, he alluded to the consumerism of American society from the example of one particular family. But the director and screenwriter Sam Esmail, the creator of “Mr. Robot”, does not scatter on such trifles and focuses on the Hitchcockian atmosphere. And he does it perfectly.

The story begins with the understandable desire of the main characters to escape from the noisy metropolis and spend carefree days in isolation from others. Gradually, their vacation will turn into a real hell, given that something clearly apocalyptic is happening around. With the appearance of uninvited guests, the film begins to evoke persistent associations with Shyamalan’s “Knock on the Door”, performed in the same genre, but later such analogies come to nothing.

Esmail and his team do a great job of conveying a sense of anxiety, skillfully building suspense with an unsettling sound design and parallel editing.

The tape works perfectly as a thriller, there will be a place for both a global mystery and tense relationships between characters. At the same time, the creators do not forget about the topics addressed by Alam: racism, social conflicts, the dependence of modern society on digital technologies, and good old conspiracy theories.

In “Leave the World Behind”, Julia Roberts’ character refuses to believe that Mahershala Ali’s character can be so wealthy (she must not have watched “Green Book”, where he looks just as impressive). The black owners of the house themselves are forced to spend the night in the basement, while their guests enjoy all the comforts up there (Tod Campbell’s camera clearly emphasizes this metaphorical hierarchy). Clay, played by Ethan Hawke, cannot drive even two meters without a GPS navigator, not to mention refusing to help a Spanish-speaking woman.

The absence of the Internet already looks like a small end of the world. Because of this, for example, Rose is very worried because she cannot watch the last episode of “Friends” (although her irresistible desire to find out before her hypothetical death how the love adventures of Ross and Rachel will end is quite understandable). And as for why all these mysterious and even more terrible events are taking place in the USA, that is left up to the discretion of the viewer.

The psychological tension between the characters is perfectly supported by the performances of the actors. This is especially true of the main stars, down to the secondary Kevin Bacon, whose character vividly symbolizes what the feeling of a real, apocalyptic threat does to people. There is a disappointing scene for Mr. Elon Musk personally, in which a huge number of Tesla cars literally “go crazy”.

In general, with spectacular scenes, Esmail is in complete order. There are not many of them, but they give the action scale and are truly impressive. Not only the visual, but also the sound design plays an important role here, so at least in this aspect the film looks better than the original source. If Alam could only describe that “terrible sound”, here the viewer has the opportunity to hear it with his own ears. As well as alarm sirens – the same ones that woke up our country on the very day when this text was written.

“Leave the World Behind” is an exemplary film adaptation, quite closely following the original source, and at the same time even surpassing it in some moments. This is a tense, beautifully acted and well-executed technically apocalyptic thriller, after watching which you once again realize that absurd and terrible reality, unfortunately, exists not only in glossy, endlessly beautiful Hollywood cinema.

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Conclusion:

“Leave the World Behind” qualitatively stands out among the majority of Friday’s Netflix releases and definitely deserves the viewer’s attention.