As “apocalyptic thriller” movies go, this 2023 Netflix movie is a bit different. My wife and I watch these types of movies because sometimes they are interesting or action-oriented etc and I often poke fun at many things we see, the typical “I think they missed the mark on that one” stuff. But I’ll give Netflix a bit of credit, this one is a little different.
We were in a movie-watching mood and we both heard this movie was good, so we clicked on Netflix and soon “Leave The World Behind” was streaming into our living room.
The premise is simple, a family needing to destress a little heads out from New York City to Long Island for a weekend away, just Mom Dad, and two kids, a teenage boy and girl. They live in Brooklyn in an area that’s supposedly a great place that’s also affordable, Mom is in advertising and Dad is a college Professor of Meso-American History. Who wouldn’t need a little de-stressing on occasion from living in NYC and working in advertising, I know I probably would.
One Airbnb reservation later and some packing they are headed down the road to Long Island to a house that advertises you can, “Leave The World Behind” by coming to this house.
Day one introduces us to the family led by Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts as they head to the country and open the house, the kids find the pool and Julia Roberts heads to the local store for some groceries. It seems like an average day, except for that bearded guy, Kevin Bacon, loading so many cases of water into the back of his pickup.
Back at the house the kids now want the beach so off we go and there’s the second sign that something is wrong. But no one sees anything to far out of the ordinary, just a random weird event that caused panic but hey someone will take care of that, right?
We are then introduced to Mahershala Ali, the supposed owner of the house, (with all transactions done via the Internet do you REALLY know if he’s “George”?) and his daughter played by Myha’la who come to the house on the premise they need a place to stay because there’s a blackout in the city and they don’t trust going there at night. But that’s just another random event, right?
Until the next morning when there are no signals, NONE. TV, Internet, radio, GPS, all down. The TV doesn’t even display the Emergency Broadcast system message most of the time and when it does it’s only on for a few seconds, not a complete message.
Ethan Hawke leaves for town to find a newspaper or at least some people but he doesn’t know where he’s going so he ends up getting lost in the country. He get’s a flyer being distributed by a small prop plane that’s written in a form of Arabic and some how manages to get back to the house but now has more questions than he had before and still no answers. Until his Son translates the front of the flyer, “Death to America” he says, he learned it from a video game, how quaint.
At this point the movie takes a turn from other movies. There are no choppers flying overhead, no Army convoys, no soldiers parachuting into town, no jets screaming into a dogfight, and no aliens coming down taking over the planet.
Instead we have 4 adults with varying degrees of fear and anxiety learning to deal with a world that isn’t conforming to what they have come to know and expect. Everyone is still working on their old system of priorities and beliefs which they slowly start to learn don’t mean anything anymore but they are unwilling to accept that. Imagine being a parent and trying to deal with this situation and your youngest child is causing problems because if you don’t fix the Internet she isn’t going to see the final episode of Friends.
This group works through their initial fear and manages to understand each other better which could lead to real trust. They also come, in different ways, to the realization that there was an attack, the United States has changed and it’s not going back to the way it was at least for awhile.
The movie uses the premise that we are a population that is so connected to the Internet for everything we do in life we are exceptionally susceptible to an attack that is designed to Isolate and Separate us.
It’s also a reminder that one day they were an average family who’s biggest problem was solved with a bit of money and the Internet but the next day all their skills were almost completely useless in a world turned upside down. Preparedness is as much a mindset as it is a physical process but being prepared for the fear is the hardest part to learn and deal with, even for educated people.
After all like Kevin Bacon said, America’s made a lot of enemies all over the world…
Garfield out
