“Lady, people aren’t chocolates. D’you know what they are mostly? Bastards. Bastard–coated bastards with a bastard filling.” – Scrubs
Director Sam Esmail’s “Leave the World Behind” is a mean, nasty, and cynical apocalyptic parable that stages the quintessential end of the world scenario but also takes a magnifying glass to humanity and the inherent paranoia that transforms a scenario from working together to survive, to survival of the fittest. While some of the symbolism is a bit clunky in some spots, “Leave the World Behind” is a very volatile and relevant take on how we’re more likely to pick at each other’s bones and fight for scraps when resources become finite. While that does feel like old hat post apocalyptic fodder, “Leave the World Behind” is refreshingly complex and quite horrifying.
It feels like a nightmarish episode of “The Twilight Zone” mixed with “Funny Games” to where we’re almost confused as the characters in this chaotic picture. While often times the narrative will clue audiences in on what’s occurring, Sam Esmail’s film keeps us in the dark as much as the audience, allowing us to come to our own conclusions. Once we’ve reached those conclusions, we’re offered a chance to converse on why we resorted to said conclusions. Rather than opening with a bang, a lot of “Leave the World Behind” bluntly makes its mission statement clear. After awakening to a quiet apartment one morning wife Amanda ponders on the spinning wheel that is humanity, and makes the firm declaration that “people suck.”
From there we’re given subtle but not immediate clues as to what’s happening with Amanda and husband Clay watching a locals stock up on food. While they’re all at the beach, youngest daughter Rose finds it impossible to look away as a massive oil ship in the distance seems to get closer and closer to the beach. To fill us in at how inept they are, the incident doesn’t really affect them as they stop off for a coffee at a local Starbucks. From there the narrative drops all the walls around us while also filling us in on how lost these characters are. They don’t pay attention to the signs, and once all sense of technological coddling is gone, they resort to the ugliness lurking deep.
Esmail is very intentional when it comes to indicating our reliance on tools that do the work for us, including thinking, all the while delving in to how we tend to escape reality in our own ways. The use of digital screens and computers has only made it so much easier. The introduction of Mahersala Ali and Myha’la Herrold as G.H. and Ruth Scott only add to this layer of uneasiness as the script once again never fills us in on who they are. They show up in the middle of the night draped in formal wear, and form a very tense back and forth with Amanda and Clay almost demanding their house back. From there a lot of the quiet stuff is said aloud.
Amanda represents the more cynical side of humanity, while Clay is optimistic and welcoming to their new guests/hosts. G.H. and Ruth are also very skeptical about their hosts, wanting to form some kind of agreement that is as fragile as the Jenga blocks the former couple was playing moments before. What we witness is the fragility of society and how easy it is for everything to crumble; we can’t be too sure what entirely happened before. All we can be certain about is that once the need to survive kicks in, humanity will devour itself. And that’s more terrifying than anything we see dealt to the world here.
Now in select theaters and begins streaming on Netflix on December 8th.