“No one is in control.” G. H. Scott (Mahershala Ali)
For Julia Roberts devotees, director Sam Esmail's Leave the World Behind is nectar not because of her acclaimed beauty but for the hard-nosed realist she plays in this apocalyptic drama on Long Island where the world appears to be headed toward destruction by forces unknown. While professor husband, Clay (Ethan Hawke), hopes for the benign connection of living things, she, Amanda, has expressed her misanthropy (“I f****ing hate people”) and pessimism about survival.
The horror of this impending doomsday goes from loss of internet connections and GPS to a gigantic oil tanker plowing into a beach, where her family is vacationing nearby in a comely and very modern AIRBNB. (The scene is a much Jordan Peele as it is Rod Serling.) As if this colossal beaching were not enough, a sound emerges, intermittently forcing everyone to cover their ears.
More ominous is the arrival of the owners, Scott and daughter, Ruth (Myha’la) who have sought refuge in their own home having been attacked by similarly inscrutable forces on Manhattan. That the father and daughter are Black gives the thriller a Jordan-Peele Get- Out cast to the proceedings. Racism, couched in her subtle objections to their staying there, is only one of the many motivations as humans devolve into their survival instincts.
Produced by the Obamas with a feeling of liberal outrage, Leave the World Behind tries to handle too many cultural topics at once. The family’s resistance to the incursions of strangers is just one of the many cultural touchstones. The devolving of humans to an animal state in the face of danger is another.
However, what it gets right is the latent disregard for fellow human beings in favor of a very limited family survival urge. Better even than Julia’s misanthropy, is that of Kevin Bacon’s survivalist, who turns out ironically to be the last best hope as the attack picks up steam.
Silly images such as a forest full of deer hanging out and eventually confronting the family and flamingos flocking to a backyard swimming pool don’t materially compromise the horrors of internet loss or useless money. Nor does the overuse of drones and steadicams.
Questions about how to survive the apocalypse are ever present—inevitably identifying with everyone in the audience. Threats to American survival are ample and constant. You can’t ask for more than that in holiday entertainment.
Leave the World Behind
Director: Sam Esmail (Homecoming)
Screenplay: Esmail
Cast: Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman), Mahershala Ali (Green Book)
Run Time: 2h 18m
Rating: R
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
