Director: Sam Esmail
Starring: Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha’la, Kevin Bacon
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 141 mins

Leave The World Behind is a post-apocalyptic thriller written and directed by Sam Esmail, most notable for creating the TV series Mr Robot. It is an adaptation of the 2020 novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam, which opens with Amanda Sandford (Julia Roberts) waking up one day and deciding to take her family (husband Clay and children Rose and Archie) on a spontaneous Long Island holiday. After a trip to the beach where an oil tanker runs ashore, they notice there is no WiFi or television signal when they return to their rental home. Later in the night, George H. Scott (Mahershala Ali) and is daughter Ruth (Myha’la) show up at the house, claiming to be the owners and that they have fled a blackout in the city. Amanda and Clay (Ethan Hawke) debate, at nauseum, whether they trust George’s alibi and are willing to accept them into their home, despite George’s offer to make things right financially for the unusual disturbance.  

Leave The World Behind is an utter car crash of a film – an overlong slog with an ear-scraping script, unlikeable characters and terrible performances. It makes M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening appear a masterpiece. The dreadful script makes itself known in the very first scene where Amanda justifies her decision to take her family on holiday through her narrow-minded view of humanity and doesn’t let up throughout the film. Characters talk unnaturally, engaging in inconsequential, insufferable monologues and the film is full-to-the-brim with pointless exposition.

Julia Roberts has a pretty spotty track record and her character is insufferable and entitled. While perhaps that means Roberts does a good job of depicting a despicable character, the poor dialogue she is saddled with means she can’t be taken seriously. I’ll watch Ethan Hawke in anything Sinister, Boyhood, First Reformed and The Black Phone but even he’s terrible in this – Clay is just a nonsensical individual. Amanda and Clay’s two children, Rose and Archie (Farrah Mackenzie and Charlie Evans) are also insufferable and while Rose is clearly meant to represent the innocent figure, she’s already well on a non-returnable path to loathsomeness. The always-reliable Mahershala Ali also isn’t given a lot to work with as the homeowner and Myha’la’ angsty teenager is a just a know-it-all brat. The only actor who comes out of the film with his reputation relatively unscathed is Kevin Bacon, who satisfies the brief of playing an untrusting survivalist.

While a collection of contemptible characters isn’t automatically reason to dismiss a film, the unsubtle and showy storytelling is. There is no tension at all to any of the scenarios the characters are put through and the attempts at horror aren’t effective, thanks to obvious CGI or green screen. A sequence with a flamboyance of flamingos is particularly laughable and although Tod Campbell may regard his cinematography as edgy with events framed in disorienting angles to try and mask the horrible script is just distracting. This is in combination with Mac Quayle’s annoyingly erratic score, with the soul and rap choices particulary ill-fitting.

Leave The World Behind is one of the worst filmic experiences I’ve been subjected to in quite some time and is a complete and utter failure. There are no stakes whatsoever and with the exception of Kevin Bacon, the cast are uniformly terrible. The film is obviously trying to analyse and form an opinion on modern culture, with examples such as the rise of driverless cars and the demise of physical media, as well as the themes of race, class and identity. But the film faulters because it’s either overly explicit or not explicit enough in its meaning and the result is a miserable experience with no satisfying conclusion. I genuinely don’t understand the positive critical reception Leave The World Behind has received and I’d highly recommend avoiding this turgid and tediously-paced work at all costs.

⭐ (Terrible)