‘No one is in control. No one is pulling the strings...’
A truly unique film is a rare thing. Leave the World Behind doesn’t exist in isolation. The kinetic camera mimics David Fincher. The ominous sense of mystery is straight out of the M. Night Shyamalan playbook. But writer-director Sam Esmail combines all of these disparate elements into something fresh and innovative. I can see why it has proved divisive but I was utterly gripped throughout…
What starts as an Airbnb nightmare in the vein of Barbarian soon morphs into something else entirely. The Sandfords are a typical nuclear family from New York City who decide to take an impromptu trip upstate. Amanda (Julia Roberts), a self-professed misanthrope with ‘no chill’ is the matriarch, her laid-back husband Clay (Ethan Hawke) is happy to leave the decision-making to her. The family is rounded out by inquisitive daughter Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) and entitled eldest son Archie (Charlie Evans). Their holiday is abruptly cut short when G.H. Scott (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la Herrold), the owners of the house, show up in the middle of the night with a strange proposition. That’s a lot of plot and I’ve still only really skimmed the surface. I would advise anyone to go into this knowing as little as possible, however.
Esmail is best known for his cult TV show Mr. Robot and he’s playing in the same sandpit here. Cyber security. The potential for a shadowy cabal to destroy the world. The brutality of man. He has also retained his knack for a striking visual set piece. There are moments here that will stay with me for a long time. Planes dropping out of the sky. A flock of deer gathered around a swimming pool. A fleet of electric, driverless cars smashing into each other on the freeway. It’s bombastic stuff and yet it never feels ostentatious or obtrusive. Hawke and Roberts make for a convincing married couple and it’s fun to see the latter play against her ‘America’s sweetheart’ persona but it is Ali and Herrold who particularly impress having to balance suspicion, the keeping of secrets, and concerns of race and gender with a rising sense of dread that becomes suffocating by the time the film reaches its curious conclusion.
And about that ending… it won’t work for some. While I could have happily sat through another half an hour (the final scene is awfully abrupt), sometimes it’s fine to leave a cinema (or your living room in this case) with more questions than answers. A film needn’t wrap things up with a pretty little bow on top and this conclusion is suitably challenging for a movie with lofty ideas and plenty to say.
Leave the World Behind is daring, innovative and often terrifying cinema. It’s not very Christmassy though