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.

The dubious puncturing of sociosexual taboos doesn’t end there. Later in the film, we see Archie not-so-subtly photographing Ruth while she sits poolside in her swimwear. A few scenes later, we see him masturbating under the bedcovers, looking at the images on his phone. Another scene sees Clay and Ruth smoke a joint by a campfire, at which point she asks him, entirely unprompted: “Have you ever f***ed one of your students?” It’s the kind of edgelord button-pushing that aims for a kind of satirical unfilteredness, but in practice, simply makes you roll your eyes.

Even when the provocation isn’t sexual, it’s no less disorienting. F-bombs fizz through the screenplay with the artless abandon of a child who’s just learnt a new swear word. The camera, meanwhile, attempts its own precocious assault on our delicate sensibilities: scenes are shot from bizarre angles, with the camera often swooping and gliding above the action. At times, it seems to directly lift from David Fincher’s Panic Room – which used a digital camera to wind and snake around a claustrophobic townhouse – but without the clarity of intent. “Why is this shot upside down?” “Why is the room spinning?” These are the questions you may find yourself asking, at several points during Leave the World Behind.

The most surprising thing about this film, and its goading intention to scandalise, may be the involvement of the Obamas. When it was announced in 2018 that the former US president and first lady had signed a long-term deal with Netflix, it’s safe to say we all expected it to yield a certain type of project – worthy; sober; probably a little dry. Sure enough, Higher Grounds’ output until now has hardly been pulse-quickening: films such as grief-based comedy-drama Fatherhood, civil rights biopic Rustin, or Worth, set in the aftermath of 9/11. Leave the World Behind, with its propensity for vulgarity and taboo, is a different kettle of fish.

Despite all these gripes, there is much in the film to like. Ali and Roberts deliver strong performances, as does Hawke in a somewhat more familiar mode. At times it’s funny, and intentionally so; at others, it’s genuinely unsettling. That would have been enough – if only the film didn’t insist upon its own irreverence. Leave the World Behind should have dialled back these instincts. In cinematic terms, it’s less a full-blown apocalypse than a midsize oil tanker run ashore. But still – we can only wonder what would have happened had it steered the course.

‘Leave the World Behind’ is available to stream on Netflix