Leave the World Behind wants to shock you – but it’s just silly

Netflix’s apocalyptic drama sets its sights on provocation with a bleak, spiky take on modern America. A bit of edge can be a good thing, writes Louis Chilton, but it needs more skill than this

Apocalypse soon: Ethan Hawke is a man facing a collapsing society in ‘Leave the World Behind’ (JoJo Whilden/NETFLIX)

Leave the World Behind wants to rattle you. The film, produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s company Higher Ground, is set in a world that’s unravelling at the seams. Technology starts to fail – phones, computers, satnavs – prompting fears of an apocalyptic cyber attack. The story follows the Sandford family, headed by middle-aged yuppies Amanda (Julia Roberts) and Clay (Ethan Hawke). Having rented a lavish country house for a getaway, they are unnerved when the house’s owner “GH” (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la) come looking for refuge. The film has already shot to No 1 on Netflix, despite mixed responses: The Independent’s Clarrise Loughrey gave it four stars, branding it “unsubtle but audacious”, while the New York Times lamented its “over-signaling dialogue”.

Leave the World Behind skewers many aspects of post-capitalist life: our over-reliance on technology; the moral vacuum of materialism; race and class resentment; environmental crisis. It is impactful in a big, disaster-movie sense: scenes of oil tankers ploughing onto beaches, or airplanes diving from the sky, are pure blockbuster terror, while a moment in which a character’s teeth begin dropping from his mouth is primo body horror. It’s a shame, then, that the overall impression of Leave the World Behind is not tension or subversion but a kind of baggy, slippery silliness.

You see, Leave the World Behind is more than these grand, shocking set pieces. Much of the film is instead dedicated to quiet, dialogue-driven character interactions. Throughout these more subdued moments, however, the screenplay (written by Sam Esmail, who also directs) continues to strain for provocation. When “GH” and Ruth first arrive at the house, for instance, Roberts’s character – a misanthropic spin on the “Karen” archetype – voices utterly baseless fears that the interloper will go and “molest” her son Archie (Charlie Evans) in the night. It’s a dark and strange line, and jars with the tone of the dialogue.