‘Leave the World Behind’ Makes the Apocalypse Excruciatingly Dull

Early into Leave the World Behind—writer-director Sam Esmail’s new thriller, in theaters Nov. 22 and streaming on Netflix Dec. 8—Amanda Sanford (Julia Roberts) proclaims just how much she detests her fellow humans. They’re loud, obnoxious, and undeservingly arrogant, she says, barely looking up from their phones long enough to avoid smacking into another person on the sidewalk, and completely unapologetic if they do. This revelation strikes Amanda so fiercely that she hops out of bed in the middle of the night, books a secluded, sprawling vacation rental in a little hamlet of the Hamptons, and starts packing suitcases for her husband Clay (Ethan Hawke) and their two kids, Archie (Charlie Evans) and Rose (Farrah Mackenzie), just so she can get away from her fellow man.

None of these actions strike Amanda as ironic. Instead, she fails to realize that her cynicism is the exact kind of trait cultivating that detached feeling. Much like Amanda, Leave the World Behind is blinded by its own smugness, fancying itself privy to the secrets of the human condition. Esmail is confident that he’s got the answer as to what will happen to our spoiled society when it all goes to shit, like it does when the Sanfords reach their remote destination. While his script’s criticisms are occasionally on-point, they’re too often muddled by both cloying messaging and the series of agonizingly vague apocalyptic events that plague the Sanfords —and the film—no matter how hard they try to escape.

For the first half of Leave the World Behind, that confusion surrounding what’s going on makes for some beguiling suspense. Viewer feels as helpless as the Sanfords do as their restorative vacation slowly turns into a nightmare of seemingly impossible proportions. But first, audiences must endure a worse fate: watching international treasure Julia Roberts be moderately racist. Two unexpected visitors, G.H. Scott (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la)—the owners of the home that Sanfords are staying in—show up while the Sanfords are in the house, claiming that they drove out from New York after a city-wide power outage. Though they show Amanda proof that they indeed live there, she’s wary of their intentions, ostensibly for no reason other than the fact that G.H. and Ruth are Black.

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