Leave the World Behind (film)
Leave the World Behind | |
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Directed by | Sam Esmail |
Screenplay by | Sam Esmail |
Based on | Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam |
Produced by |
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Starring |
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Cinematography | Tod Campbell |
Edited by | Lisa Lassek |
Music by | Mac Quayle |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | Netflix |
Release dates |
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Running time | 140 minutes[2] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Leave the World Behind is a 2023 American apocalyptic psychological thriller film written and directed by Sam Esmail. It is based on the 2020 novel by Rumaan Alam. The film stars Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha'la Herrold, and Kevin Bacon as they try to make sense of a rapid breakdown in phones, television, and other common technology which points to a potential cataclysm. The subtext throughout the film intersects with racism and class bias.
Leave the World Behind had its world premiere at the AFI Fest on October 25, 2023. It was released in select theaters on November 22, 2023, before its streaming release by Netflix on December 8, 2023. It received positive reviews from critics.
Plot
Misanthrope Amanda Sandford arranges an impromptu weekend getaway at a vacation rental with her husband Clay and their kids, Archie and Rose. After arriving at the rental, Amanda goes to the store. While shopping for groceries, Amanda sees a man stocking up on large quantities of canned food and water. Later, while the family relaxes at a nearby beach, they evade an oil tanker that runs ashore. When they return to the house, they notice the TV and Wi-Fi are not working and a pair of deer stare at them.
That night, the owner, George H. ("G.H.") Scott, and his daughter, Ruth, arrive at the house. Seeking shelter, G.H. explains that a blackout caused their return. Amanda is suspicious and doesn't want them to stay. Clay however trusts them and lets them stay the night. Later in the night, the television switches to displaying an emergency warning from the Emergency Broadcast System on all channels.
The next morning, Rose is frustrated that the Wi-Fi and TV are still down, which has prevented her from watching the series finale of Friends. Amanda notices four news alerts on her phone, two of which are about the blackout affecting the East Coast, the third alert about a hacker attack being behind the power outage and the final one beginning with the word "Breaking" and containing corrupted or encrypted text. Rose sees a much larger herd of deer standing motionless in the backyard.
Attempting to learn about the disruptions and fix the Wi-Fi, Clay drives to town while G.H. heads to his neighbor's house. Clay gets lost and exits his car to look around, missing a few seconds of clear reception on the radio broadcasting news of the cyber attack having catastrophic environmental effects in the South. He finds a Spanish-speaking woman seeking help, but abandons her and eventually encounters a drone dropping leaflets written in Arabic. G.H. searches the neighbor's home, finds a satellite phone inside and determines that there's no signal from the satellites. On the beach nearby, he discovers the wreckage of a plane crash just before narrowly escaping another airliner crashing.
Rose walks with Archie in the woods, where they come across an empty shed and Archie removes a tick from his ankle on the way back. Returning to the house, G.H. confides to Amanda the events he has witnessed. He thinks that satellite connectivity has been disrupted, but he is cut off by a loud, shrill noise that lasts several seconds. Amanda recalls the man stockpiling supplies, whom G.H. assumes to be Danny, his contractor. Clay returns shaken with the leaflet, which Archie partially translates as "Death to America". The Sandfords decide to drive to Amanda's sister in New Jersey but find the expressway jammed with collided brand-new self-driving Teslas; they narrowly avoid more incoming Tesla cars continuing to drive into the pile-up, and are forced to return to G.H.'s house.
Throughout the night, Ruth asks Clay provocative questions and they later discover flamingos in the pool. Amanda and G.H. establish a friendly bond but they are cut off by a second shrill noise, and the power fails. Later, Rose tells Amanda a version of the parable of the drowning man from an episode of The West Wing.
The next morning, Archie's teeth inexplicably fall out. Believing it is related to the tick bite, G.H. suggests visiting Danny for medicine. Rose is now missing and G.H. and Clay take Archie to visit Danny, while Amanda and Ruth search for Rose. At the shed, the two are confronted by an even larger herd of deer, which they scare away. G.H. and Clay attempt to convince Danny to help Archie, which results in an armed standoff between G.H. and Danny. Clay intervenes, convincing Danny to help Archie. Danny informs them that another neighbor may be equipped with an underground bunker and suggests that the shrill noises which have most likely led to Archie's teeth falling out result from use of microwave weapons.
Shaken, G.H. tells Clay and Archie that on the basis of his work with military contractors that the country is in a three-stage campaign leading first to breakdown of social order and resulting in coup d'état or civil war. At the same time, Amanda and Ruth watch New York City being bombed. Rose then finds the neighbor's house with the bunker. Inside, a computer message warns of attacks by rogue military elements and elevated radiation levels in many U.S. cities. She finds a DVD of Friends and watches the series finale.
Cast
- Julia Roberts as Amanda Sandford
- Mahershala Ali as G.H. Scott
- Ethan Hawke as Clay Sandford
- Myha'la as Ruth Scott
- Farrah Mackenzie as Rose Sandford
- Charlie Evans as Archie Sandford
- Kevin Bacon as Danny
- Vanessa Aspillaga as Salvadora
Production
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Sam_Esmail_at_SXSW_2016.jpg/220px-Sam_Esmail_at_SXSW_2016.jpg)
Netflix won a bidding war for the rights to the novel by Rumaan Alam in July 2020, with Sam Esmail attached to write and direct. Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington were set to star in and produce the film.[3]
Former U.S. President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama executive-produced the film through their Higher Ground Productions banner. Obama included the novel on his 2021 summer reading list.[4]
Writing
Obama offered Esmail his thoughts on the screenplay during the writing process. Esmail said, "He had a lot notes [sic] about the characters and the empathy we would have for them. I have to say he is a big movie lover, and he wasn't just giving notes about things that were from his background. He was giving notes as a fan of the book, and he wanted to see a really good film."[4]
Casting and filming
In September 2021, Mahershala Ali had been cast in the film, replacing Washington, who had left the project.[5] Ethan Hawke and Myha'la Herrold joined in January 2022.[6][7]
Filming began in April 2022 on Long Island,[8] in a home designed by The Up Studio.[9] Additional filming took place in Katonah, New York, in May 2022.[10]
Soundtrack
Mac Quayle composed an original score for the film which consisted of nine notes and was inspired by French composer Olivier Messiaen and his Messiaen modes, namely Mode 3. Quayle said, "I started playing around with them and I found that Mode 3, which is essentially a scale, was producing a really interesting harmonic feeling," going on to say "And I got this idea that I might do the entire film in this one mode... I didn't know if it would carry me through the entire film, but it did."[11]
Esmail tried to pick songs that had not been used on TV or film before as he was worried viewers would have associations with those songs that would "interfere or complicate what the scene's about or what the viewer is feeling as they're watching the scene". For example, Esmail chose "Too Close" by Next, a song that he felt was "really funny and sweet at the same time" and had not been overused in film, for a scene that "goes from lighthearted and playful to sad and dark within a matter of a minute".[11]
Release
Leave the World Behind had its world premiere as the opening film of the AFI Fest on October 25, 2023, with the cast not attending due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike.[12] It was released in limited theaters on November 22, before streaming Netflix on December 8, 2023.[13]
Reception
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 75% of 155 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "An exceptionally well-acted apocalyptic thriller, Leave the World Behind steadily draws the viewer in despite its leisurely pace and somewhat simplistic messaging."[14] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 68 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[15]
In a positive review for The Washington Post, Michael O'Sullivan wrote, "It plays like an M. Night Shyamalan movie, but without the supernatural element and with a thick vein of social critique running throughout. What happens may be extreme, but it feels based on mundane reality."[16] Wenlei Ma writing for The Sunday Times called the film "jittery and suspenseful", and that some overhead cinematography "emphasises that we're all puppets in someone's else [sic] marionette theatre ... we're not in control, but Esmail is of his startling, character-driven doomsday story".[17]
Bilge Ebiri for Vulture compared the film unfavorably to Alam's book: "every change made for the adaptation happens to be for the worse. ... the film doesn't demonstrate any kind of interest in, or affection for, its characters. ... This feels more like a collection of cool ideas than scenes that belong to the same emotional and consequential continuum."[18] Alissa Wilkinson for The New York Times wrote, "After a while, the movie plays like a bulleted list of everything wrong with America ... the narrative tension dulls into passivity, both for us and for the characters", and that the "ending seems like a punchline."[19]
Esmail said he hoped the film's ending would provoke conversation: "...the expectation is at the end of [traditional disaster] films, your cast of characters overcomes the disaster and the world reverts back to some sane semblance of normalcy. I knew that I wasn't going to do that."[20]
Audience viewership
From December 4 to December 10, 2023, the film topped the streaming charts and was the number one film on Netflix, with 41.7 million views.[21] By the end of 2023, it had accumulated 121 million views.[22] In January 2024, the film entered Netflix's most popular films of all-time list at eighth place, scoring 136.3 million views in its first 52 days.[23] As of May 2024, it's placed as the fifth most popular film in English of all time, with 143.4 million views.[24]
Symbolism and subtext
The film Leave the World Behind unfolds an all-too-familiar apocalyptic scenario. The breakdown of societal order, driven by external threats and internal strife, follows a predictable yet harrowing path. The narrative encapsulates this descent into chaos, painting a grim picture of humanity's vulnerability to coordinated attacks and the fragility of modern civilization.[25]
As the White parents prepare for bed, a Black father and his daughter unexpectedly arrive at their doorstep, fleeing from a dire situation unfolding in Manhattan, potentially affecting the entire United States. With internet, phones, and television all down, the family's confusion mounts. However, a Wall Street speculator, forewarned by a wealthy client, understands the gravity of the situation. America's enemies have launched a three-stage attack: first, they disable communication networks and infrastructure; second, they spread misinformation; and finally, they rely on Americans to descend into a kind of survival-of-the-fittest chaos. The ensuing pandemonium sees cities in flames and people turning on each other, marking the collapse of society.[25]
The oil tanker named White Lion running aground helps set the stage for the apocalyptic turn, immediately creating a sense of mystery and impending doom. Once the characters become aware of a widespread disaster, Ethan Hawke's character Clay Sandford attempts to connect the grounding of the tanker with an attack on America. Clay justifiably believes that whoever attacked the U.S. in "Leave the World Behind" would want to disrupt the American oil supply. However, the ship's name hints at a deeper meaning. The White Lion is a reference to the ship attributed to beginning slavery in America, symbolizing the arrival of the first African slaves to Virginia in 1619.[26]
In a pivotal moment of American history, the English ship The White Lion arrived in the Virginia Colony in 1619, marking the inception of slavery on American soil. This event, often regarded as the beginning of one of America's most grievous injustices, casts a long shadow over the nation's history.
By linking this historical atrocity to the ominous foreshadowing in the novel Leave the World Behind, the narrative subtly underscores a deep-seated motive behind the novel's central conflict, that is in part about residential segregation and socioeconomic class in America.
In the novel, Amanda's character is "more alarmed by the fact that the Washingtons are Black—'those people didn't look the sort to own such a beautiful house,'[27] she and husband Clay question how their AirBnb landlords could be wealthy and Black, and they were described as arriving in a car that was “not so new as to be luxurious or so old as to be bohemian”.[28]
Narrative techniques frame the contemporary disaster throughout the film within a broader context of the enduring moral reckoning around racism and poverty in the United States.[26][29][30] The novel that was the basis of the film was published three months after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Three years of protests followed coinciding with the 2023 Netflix release of this film.
References
- ^ Grobar, Matt (April 14, 2022). "The Obamas' Higher Ground Boards Sam Esmail's Netflix Pic Leave the World Behind". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on October 5, 2023. Retrieved April 14, 2022.
- ^ "Leave the World Behind (15)". BBFC. December 22, 2023. Archived from the original on December 23, 2023. Retrieved December 23, 2023.
- ^ Fleming, Mike Jr. (July 20, 2020). "Netflix Wins Julia Roberts-Denzel Washington-Sam Esmail Package Leave The World Behind Based On Rumaan Alam's Upcoming Novel". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on October 7, 2023. Retrieved August 9, 2021.
- ^ a b "'Leave the World Behind': Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, and Ethan Hawke Face the End-Times". Vanity Fair. September 27, 2023. Archived from the original on October 24, 2023. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
- ^ Kroll, Justin (September 14, 2021). "Mahershala Ali To Co-Star With Julia Roberts In Sam Esmail and Netflix's Leave The World Behind". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on October 2, 2023. Retrieved September 14, 2021.
- ^ Kroll, Justin (January 18, 2022). "Ethan Hawke, Industry's Myha'la Herrold & Others Join Julia Roberts In Netflix's Leave The World Behind". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on October 2, 2023. Retrieved January 18, 2022.
- ^ Gonzalez, Umberto (April 18, 2022). "Kevin Bacon Joins Julia Roberts' Leave the World Behind at Netflix (Exclusive)". TheWrap. Archived from the original on April 19, 2023. Retrieved April 18, 2022.
- ^ Lovece, Frank (April 5, 2022). "Julia Roberts' Netflix movie Leave the World Behind filming on Long Island". Newsday. Archived from the original on April 19, 2023. Retrieved April 6, 2022.
- ^ Ramirez, Jeffrey (August 10, 2023). "The House from Leave the World Behind". Archived from the original on August 11, 2023. Retrieved August 10, 2023.
- ^ Croke, Karen (May 24, 2022). "Julia Roberts, Jesse Eisenberg projects filming in Katonah, Nyack". lohud. Archived from the original on October 9, 2023. Retrieved May 25, 2022.
- ^ a b Cremona, Patrick (December 11, 2023). "Leave the World Behind soundtrack: All the songs in the Netflix thriller". Radio Times. Archived from the original on December 12, 2023. Retrieved December 11, 2023.
- ^ Rankin, Seija (October 25, 2023). "What the 'Leave the World Behind' Adaptation (and a Julia Roberts-Starring Role) Means to Rumaan Alam". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on December 12, 2023. Retrieved November 6, 2023.
- ^ Evans, Greg (October 2, 2023). "Leave The World Behind Trailer: Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali & Ethan Hawke Face Apocalypse In Netflix Film". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on October 7, 2023. Retrieved October 2, 2023.
- ^ "Leave the World Behind". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved December 21, 2023.
- ^ "Leave the World Behind". Metacritic. Fandom, Inc. Retrieved December 9, 2023.
- ^ O'Sullivan, Michael (November 20, 2023). "'Leave the World Behind': Real, and real scary". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 29, 2023.
- ^ Ma, Wenlei (December 7, 2023). "Suspenseful movie taps into our anxieties". PerthNow. Archived from the original on December 30, 2023. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
- ^ Ebiri, Bilge (December 8, 2023). "Leave the World Behind Doesn't Know What to Do With the Apocalypse". Vulture. Archived from the original on December 30, 2023. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
- ^ Wilkinson, Alissa (December 7, 2023). "'Leave the World Behind' Review: It's the End of the World, I Guess". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on December 30, 2023. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
- ^ Rose, Lacey (December 20, 2023). "'Leave the World Behind' Director Sam Esmail Explains His Controversial Ending". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on December 25, 2023. Retrieved December 25, 2023.
- ^ Campione, Katie (December 12, 2023). "Leave The World Behind Dominates Netflix In Streaming Debut; Obliterated Takes No. 1 For TV". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on December 17, 2023. Retrieved December 18, 2023.
- ^ Porter, Rick (June 7, 2024). "Netflix Data Dump: The Biggest Bombs (and Hits)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved June 7, 2024.
- ^ Seitz, Loree (January 30, 2024). "'Leave the World Behind' Enters Netflix's Most-Watched Films". TheWrap. Retrieved March 5, 2024.
- ^ "Top 10 Most Popular Movies on Netflix of All Time". www.netflix.com. Retrieved March 5, 2024.
- ^ a b Mudede, Charles (December 11, 2023). "Leave the World Behind Is, as Usual, About a World We Do Not Want to Leave Behind". The Stranger. Retrieved June 8, 2024.
- ^ a b Dubiel, Bill (December 15, 2023). "Clay Was Wrong About The White Lion Ship In Leave The World Behind: Its Warning Was Much Deeper". ScreenRant. Retrieved June 8, 2024.
- ^ Kelly, Hillary (October 5, 2020). ""Leave the World Behind," a Novel About the Disaster That Won't End". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved June 8, 2024.
- ^ Atakora, Afia (October 6, 2020). "What Happens When a Vacation Goes Wrong — and Not in a Funny Way?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 8, 2024.
- ^ Ryles, Richard (December 26, 2023). "A Must-Watch: Hidden Black History Facts in 'Leave The World Behind'". The Root. Retrieved June 8, 2024.
- ^ Castillo, Rafael C. (December 21, 2023). "Commentary: 'Leave the World Behind' is the wake-up call America needs". San Antonio Express-News. Retrieved June 8, 2024.
External links
- 2023 films
- 2023 psychological thriller films
- 2020s American films
- 2020s English-language films
- American psychological thriller films
- Netflix original films
- Films affected by the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike
- Films based on American novels
- Films directed by Sam Esmail
- Films set in Long Island
- Films shot in New York (state)
- Films with screenplays by Sam Esmail
- Higher Ground Productions films
- Second American Civil War speculative fiction
- American disaster films
- Apocalyptic films
- Films about families
- Films set in bunkers