LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND (NETFLIX) (2023)

SYNOPSIS: A family's getaway to a luxurious rental home takes an ominous turn when a cyberattack knocks out their devices — and two strangers appear at their door.

MOVIE REVIEW:

A star-studded cast in an apocalyptic movie? Sounds like a potential movie idea tailored for Roland Emmerich in the mid 90’s.

But Leave the World Behind has nothing to do with Emmerich. It actually comes from former U.S. President Obama’s production house and based on a book by Rumaan Alam and written for the screen and directed by Sam Esmail, creator and director of the acclaimed Mr Robot television series. That’s a pretty long list of who and whom.

For better or worse, Leave the World Behind isn’t that kind of end-of-the-world, VFX heavy action thriller that is full of cartoonish characters and scientific jargons you don’t care about. It’s a movie that touches on many themes for example our crumbling society, political instability, conspiracy theories, race and colour and more.

The story starts with Amanda (Julia Roberts), a marketing executive who booked an impromptu vacation to a luxury house in Long Island. Along with her is her husband, Clay (Ethan Hawke), her teenage son, Archie and overly mature daughter, Rose. However, the very rich owner of the house, G.H. (Mahershala Ali) and her daughter, Ruth (Myha’la) turned up the very night seeking refuge citing of blackouts in the city and they are kind of stuck.

Meanwhile, they experienced a lack of phone and Wi-Fi signals and a whole lot of mistrust as Amanda is highly suspicious of G.H.’s words and motives. The next day, Clay decides to go to town only to encounter a drone dropping leaflets in Arabic. Rose on the other keeps seeing deers roaming around their house. The entire family attempts to flee but finds the only highway back to the city is jammed with crashing Teslas on auto-pilot mode. Later on, Archie finds his teeth falling off which makes for a chilling sequence.

What’s exactly is going on? A terrorist attack? A cyberattack?

As intriguing as it sounds, this is a movie without a payoff so beware. It functions like a M. Night Shyamalan thriller. You expect a twist in the end but there isn’t. Not even a cheap one. Things are hinted and shown liked a crashing plane and an oil tanker stranded on a beach. There’s often loud ominous music and effects to emphasise the supposedly gripping apocalypse. To his credit, the setup by Esmail is often impactful to say the least. Alas, there’s no correct or direct answers to the happenings.

On the whole, it’s a very talky movie. A whole lot of themes are discussed throughout either between Amanda and G.H. or between G.H. and Ruth. Roberts deliver a compelling, maybe even consider irritable performance as the people hating, disgruntled Amanda. Mahershala Ali charms as the only man in the household with the righteousness and mentality to lead the group. Kevin Bacon cameos as a uncompromising survivalist although we love to see more of him.

Leave the World Behind certainly works better as a 4-part mini-series instead of a 2.5 hours movie. A lot is crammed into it but it’s abrupt ending and tedious study on human behaviour might be a turn off to most audiences expecting a rousing conclusion to all the mysterious build-up.

MOVIE RATING:

Review by Linus Tee