Title - Leave The World Behind
Production - Esmail Corp., Higher Ground Productions, Netflix
Starring - Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha'la, Kevin Bacon, Farrah Mackenzie, Charlie Evans
Writer - Rumaan Alam, Sam Esmail
Director - Sam Esmail
Release - 8 December 2023
It's probably unfair to compare Sam Esmail to M. Night Shyamalan because Esmail does have a proliferate body of work up to this point, but unfortunately I have never seen any of his work - I've watched a few episodes of Mr. Robot but it didn't entice me to continue watching it.
Now, the reason I opened with that was because, watching Leave The World Behind, especially in the first act; reminded me so much of how Shyamalan would direct this first acts. Of course, Esmail and Rumaan Alam wrote much better dialogue than Shyamalan but just the way the scenes unfolded, the way the camera panned in and moved (just with different angles than Shyamalan), and the overall tone of the setup - all of these were so reminiscent of what Shyamalan would do.
The second act, which could so easily broken the pace of a movie such as this, did not let me down. The mystery continued to build and there were more and more toppings added onto what was already a compelling backdrop.
And Ethan Hawke had one of his more memorable performances here as well when he pleaded with Kevin Bacon's character. It was just so natural in the progression of that scene and when Esmail cut to Hawke's monologue, it was brilliant.
Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali were also both great in their characters, Roberts more so in giving the audience a sense of who she really was; but it was great to see Ali doing something as his Marvel movie Blade was stuck in limbo for so long.
The ending of this movie I thought was, perhaps not the best conclusion or not what people wanted, but a quiet end that was left open to possibilities. It wasn't conclusive but I thought with how it was presented here, it worked and I have no complaints about it.
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