Review: Leave the World Behind

I watched LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND last night. This is a Netflix film that has some folks in the prepper community abuzz. Here’s a brief, and spoiler-free, synopsis.

The film focuses on two families. The Sanfords decide to take a vacation and rent an Airbnb in Long Island. The family consists of Amanda (Mom), Clay (Dad), Rose (daughter, age 13), and Archie (son, age 16). After they arrive to the house, Amanda goes grocery shopping. While she’s putting her bags into her car, she sees a rough looking guy in the parking lot loading cases of bottled water and buckets of freeze-dried food into the back of his truck. Later that day, the family heads to the beach. While there, an oil tanker runs aground at the same beach.

That night, George “GH” Scott and his daughter Ruth show up at the front door. George is the owner of the home. They had been in the city when a blackout occurred, so they drove out to their vacation home. They knew that the Sanfords were there, but they had no way to call ahead as all phone lines, including cell service, are down. Eventually, the two families come to an agreement where they can all stay at the home until they can figure out what’s going on. Information about the situation is spotty at best, but there are a couple of theories posited by the characters.

As the film progresses, we see things like planes crashing, weird animal behavior, and instances of offensive noises causing pain to the characters. There’s also a pretty cool doomsday bunker that gets featured at one point.

All in all, I thought the movie was pretty meh. The plot was interesting, but I felt like there was a lot more that they could have done with it. The director chose to use a lot of “artsy” camera pans and angles that did nothing but make my head hurt. Which I suppose may have been the point, to make the audience physically uncomfortable during certain scenes.

I wanted to like the movie, as I’m a big fan of end of the world films in general. But LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND just didn’t do much for me.

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