By Marc S. Sanders
Anxiety and the unknown are the themes of Sam Esmail’s apocalyptic Leave the World Behind. Actually, I can’t even be sure it’s apocalyptic or not until the end arrives. Even then I wasn’t so sure.
A family (Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke as the parents, Farrah Mackenzie, Charlie Evans as the kids) make an impromptu getaway from New York City and rent a luxurious upstate air B & B for the next five days. Upon arrival they are quickly relaxed amid all the amenities and beautiful outdoor pool. A visit to the beach is refreshing until an oil tanker arrives from the deep ocean waters and drifts upon the shore with no warning. Strange, but okay. No need for that to ruin the vacation.
Then other unexpected occurrences happen. A charming gentleman dressed handsomely in a tuxedo and his formally dressed daughter appear on the doorstep of the home in the middle of the night. They are played very well by Mahershala Ali and Myha’la. The man claims that he’s the owner of the house and while attending a concert in the city, they needed to make a quick exit and the best place to hold up was at this house. Conveniently, he does not have any ID to prove his identity along with no specific personal items in this home he claims to own, not even the title ownership papers. No photos of family tucked away anywhere. He does have a key to the liquor cabinet, however.
Quickly, the scene is set where the internet goes down. Federal blue screen warnings appear on every television channel. Cell phones don’t work. Deer, lots and lots of deer, appear in the backyard and then disappear. Pink flamingos wade in the pool. Elon Musk’s white Tesla cars have a stand out scene. Roberts then recalls seeing a grizzled Kevin Bacon collecting an abundance of supplies when she made an earlier shopping trip in the local town.
The paranoia starts to set in beginning with Julia Roberts’ character Amanda. Amanda declares early on that she fucking hates people. Hawke’s husband character, Clay, is not ready to hit any panic button and is happy to accommodate the strangers on the doorstep and just wait for the internet to be restored with a logical explanation. Ali’s character, known as G.H., lends a welcome smile but it’s clear he’s not sharing all that he’s thinking or maybe what he knows.
Sam Esmail’s film wants to provide a demonstration of how people respond when they don’t know all that’s going on, particularly when modern technology fails us. A more relatable inconvenience is suggested as Mackenzie’s character Rose is frustrated that her streaming channel shut down just as she was starting to watch the final episode of the sitcom, Friends. I felt her anguish immediately as my daughter consumes the trials and tribulations of Ross and Rachel on a repetitive cycle. Ironically, streaming goes down and now the girl can’t watch Friends. Netflix is the distributor of this film. Yet, I think they just gave a ringing endorsement for a dying medium. If only this girl collected the DVDs.
My problem with Leave the World Behind is the slow pace of it all. This is one of those movies where its triumphs hinge upon the final five minutes or so. Either you applaud what sums up the last two and a half hours you invested, or you roll your eyes at where the picture drops you off with the urge to throw your popcorn at the screen.
Watching Leave the World Behind brought back experiences of shows like Lost or The Walking Dead. The set ups are brilliantly intriguing from one development to another. The follow through on each new happening amounts to nothing or at least not anything where I can suspend my disbelief. Questions are answered with questions. It’s like calling an insurance company for information following a car accident. You just want to slam the phone down.
When Ali’s character chooses to check on a neighbor, he sees a watch embedded in the sand nearby. He picks it up only to get a fright that makes us jump. The viewer sees nothing else and we are led to believe that Ali sees nothing else, until Esmail goes to a wide overhead shot showing the massive wreckage of a commercial airplane crash, complete with black smoke and flames and endless amounts of luggage and debris. It’s hard for me to buy a scene like this. G.H. doesn’t smell any burning fire nearby? He doesn’t hear anything? He doesn’t see any other debris left mere inches away from the wristwatch only until Esmail’s direction goes from closeup to wide? I cannot accept the character’s tunnel vision. My eyes would go towards the crashed plane before I’d ever discover a wristwatch. It’s just eerily quiet. The director’s manipulation is a set up shock for me, the viewer, to grab my attention. Yet, it backfires because it’s completely implausible. There are many moments like this in the film.
Other than Marhershala Ali (who I still insist should be considered a viable candidate for the next James Bond or a 007 adversary), the rest of the cast is not dynamic enough. Julia Roberts is working a little too hard. Ethan Hawke is not working hard enough. The dialogue is often boring arriving at no conclusions. Thankfully, most scenes are enhanced by unusual camera angles from Esmail’s artistic freedoms with his lens. It’s reminiscent of the deliberately weird structure that Stanley Kubrick often did with The Shining. Nevertheless, it’s exhausting after a while.
Sam Esmail’s work is no doubt shown through long ponderous imagination. I certainly felt Julia Roberts’ frustration on display, but still, I got the point. I see no reason to repeat the same lines at higher volume. I got the point of a lack of trust between the two parties being brought together. However, I just got tired of the act. The racial elephant in the room is even suggested. Though I wish it wasn’t. People quickly forget that George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead steered clear of any racial factor, and just look at the legacy of that film from the era of the Civil Rights Movement.
The ending that arrives seems inevitable. Without revealing anything literal, it is doom and gloom. However, I might have had more appreciation if suddenly the TV and internet got restored and these odd occurrences all just happened to be one big nothing. At the very least, then I’d understand that this whole freaking planet would just go nuts without their You Tube, Instagram and Netflix.
You might have had a conversation at one point in the last decade or so that began as “How did we ever manage to survive before the internet?” The truth is we did just fine. The adults in Leave the World Behind never stop to remember that though.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 