Film Review - Leave The World Behind (2023)

A world without wi-fi. Nightmare, right? The teenagers in Sam Esmail’s Leave The World Behind can’t imagine anything worse, but their parents know there is something bigger and more devastating happening. And it’s not just on the horizon. It’s here. Now.

Played by Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali and Myha’la, seem plausible enough and, when easy going Clay (Hawke) agrees to let them in and stay overnight, Amanda (Roberts) is less than thrilled at the idea. It all goes from bad to worse.

Based on Rumaan Alam’s bestseller of the same name, the film gets off to a heavy handed start: the dialogue takes a tick-box approach to setting the scene and Roberts’ declaration of how she feels about people is done with such emphasis, you know it’ll be significant later on. Much to the audience’s relief, the script does improve, even if subtlety isn’t necessarily its strong point. Where it scores is in creating an atmosphere of fear and isolation, one close to paranoia as the inexplicable events mount up – planes dropping out of the skies, wildlife behaving strangely, prolonged, ear-splitting noises – and the two families repeatedly clashing as an explanation becomes even more unlikely.

A psychological thriller with more than a touch of horror, it presents a grim vision of the future yet references to classic chillers are surprisingly frequent. Driving through a flat landscape, Hawke finds himself pursued from above by a plane which drops unintelligible leaflets, instead of poison. Flocks of birds take to the skies en masse, while deer gather in herds, no longer afraid of people and taking on a sinister air. And, as the tanker heads for the beach, the holidaymakers all scatter Jaws-style. It’s all very familiar, but effective nonetheless.

What looks like yet another star-spangled but uninspired effort from Netflix turns out to be an improvement, thanks in no small part to the efforts of its cast. Ali, in particular, brings real class to proceedings with his customary elegance and charisma. Only Kevin Bacon is out of place and that’s not because of his performance. He makes a brief appearance in the first half hour but you know he’ll be back: common sense tells you an actor of his calibre isn’t going to be squandered that shamelessly. A less familiar face would have given the character more significance and ramped up the tension even more. There’s a real sense of discomfort at the end of the film, despite its ironic ending, so the outside world feels more uncertain than ever. But the warnings beneath the apocalyptic vision on screen never wholly convince.