#MovieReview: Leave ‘Leave the World Behind’ behind [Watch]
Is it a terrorist attack, has the country gone to war, is it aliens?
Mild spoilers throughout
Leave the World Behind tries to wear many hats but none fit comfortably.
Part tech anxiety, part end of the world thriller, part class examination, the film unfortunately ends as less than the sum of its parts.
Director Sam Esmail draws a truly fantastic cast of actors to see out his vision, but something is lacking despite their best efforts.
Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke star as New York couple Amanda and Clay Sandford who take an opportunity to get out the city for a few days of holiday with their kids.
Amanda is a hard-edged advertising executive and Clay is a feeble college professor who confuses his indecision for deeper thought.
As they arrive at their rented holiday home in the affluent Long Island countryside, things start well but slowly go awry.
It is gradual at first, but the stringy score soon ratchets up tension when the family is met by George (Mahershala Ali) and Ruth Scott (Myha’la).
The father-daughter duo arrive at the door of the home in the middle of the night, claiming it to be theirs but unable to fully prove it.
George and Ruth are black and the movie tries to suggest to us there is underlying racial tension behind whatever decisions the characters make.
But aside from some vaguely combative arguments between Amanda and the spirited Ruth, there are no real interesting questions posed on the topic.
In the background of this melodrama of manners is a world quietly giving in to something which the characters do not initially understand.
Is it a terrorist attack, has the country gone to war, is it aliens?
Leave the World Behind’s best sequences come during this exploratory period when the extent of the crisis is revealed to the families.
An excellent mini-horror scene involving self-driving cars is particularly memorable.
But when stuck in a house with the characters, this over-directed movie runs out of steam pretty quickly.
The endless Dutch angles and always moving camera get tiring after a while, rather than breeding tension.
And it all leads to a real big swing of an ending that did not work for me, but might do for others.
Find it on Netflix now.
Rated 18 for scenes of Sex, Violence and Language.
3/5.
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