‘Leave The World Behind’: AFI Fest Review

Dir: Sam Esmail. US. 2023. 139mins

With Hitchcockian flair and creeping unease, writer-director Sam Esmail’s second feature is a confident, entertaining thriller about two families forced to live together in the middle of nowhere as civilization collapses around them. Leave The World Behind draws from familiar elements, but this adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel stands out thanks to its excellent performances and slow, superb escalation of tension. Highlighted by a commanding turn from Julia Roberts, who previously worked with Esmail on his Prime Video series Homecoming, the entire ensemble shines, crafting a portrait of the end of the world that doubles as an examination of the helplessness felt by many in the face of life’s invisible dangers.

Excellent performances and slow, superb escalation of tension

Leave The World Behind is an appropriate opening-night world premiere for AFI Fest considering that Esmail is an alumni of the American Film Institute. Netflix will release the nerve-wracking picture in US theatres on November 22 before it comes to the streaming platform on December 8. The recognisable genre elements should help attract viewers, as will a cast that includes Mahershala Ali and Ethan Hawke.

Wanting to get out of town with her professor husband Clay (Hawke) and their two teenage children (Charlie Evans and Farrah Mackenzie), Manhattan advertising executive Amanda (Roberts) impulsively rents a posh vacation house out in Long Island, excited to have a break. But once they arrive, strange occurrences — including an oil tanker inexplicably running ashore while they are on the beach — start to unnerve them, leading to the disturbing arrival of G.H. (Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la) in the middle of the night. G.H. explains that he is the one who rented Amanda the house, saying they need to crash there as a blackout has paralysed New York City. Clay wants to help them but Amanda is distrustful, convinced that G.H. is hiding something.

Best known for his Emmy-winning sci-fi series Mr. Robot, Esmail plugs into a similar strain of elegant paranoia for Leave The World Behind, constantly hinting that unseen menace awaits Amanda and her family. Are G.H. and Ruth not who they claim to be? Why do deer keep showing up in the backyard, staring eerily at the house? Why aren’t their television, radio or cell phones picking up a signal? Those questions only lead to more, as Esmail and cinematographer Tod Campbell ratchet up the suspense, sometimes placing the camera above the characters’ heads, pointing straight down, like a pitiless deity watching the protagonists wrestle with their anxiety as it becomes increasingly clear that there is more than a blackout at play. 

Cut off from news sources — and unable to get to the nearest town thanks to a sly surprise that is one of the film’s darkest jokes — Amanda and G.H. square off, rarely agreeing on what to do. Roberts impresses as a hard-edged wife and mother who long ago became the assertive one in her marriage. (Hawke is amusingly ineffectual, turning Clay into an amiable but weak beta-male.) G.H. proves to be a worthy adversary — unless, of course, he truly does mean no harm — and Ali constantly makes the character charming and opaque in equal measure, never letting us (or Amanda) know for sure what to think of him.

Often bleakly funny, Esmail’s sharp dialogue ensures that the characters react in intelligent, relatable ways to an increasingly harrowing, uncertain situation. Leave The World Behind does not feature the level of spectacle of a bigger-budgeted apocalyptic thriller, but when the film unveils its stunning revelations about what is actually happening in the world outside the house, it’s grippingly executed.

Myha’la gives the picture’s most cutting performance, playing Ruth as a smart-mouthed twentysomething who is not intimidated by Amanda, constantly delighting in pushing the uptight older woman’s buttons. Whether seductively flirting with Clay or speaking to her father like a peer, Ruth is coldly calculating, and Myha’la conveys the character’s shrewdness while simultaneously suggesting the fear she is trying to keep at bay.

With a film like this, much is riding on how the story’s mysteries are eventually answered. The resolution mostly satisfies, although it is a bit protracted, unravelling some of the sustained dread. Even so, Esmail never resorts to unearned plot twists, instead offering an explanation that is meant to be somewhat anticlimactic. This thriller of mistrust and blind panic, based on a book released during the pandemic, touches on the terrors that we cannot control, whether it is strangers at our door or the possibility of societal collapse. Fittingly, Leave The World Behind provides no happy ending to calm our fears, instead critiquing our very need for escapism. Amanda just wanted to get away for a while, but some realities cannot be outrun.