DREAD RECKONING

LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali and Ethan Hawke face the apocalypse in a film that flips the disaster movie on its head.

The disaster movie is a tried-and-true cinematic genre, from the sublime (Titanic, Gravity) to the, well, disastrous (Geostorm, Meteor). But what they all have in common is that the cause of the cataclysm is never in doubt – usually it’s in the title. This is definitively not the case in Leave the World Behind, Sam Esmail’s adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s 2020 bestseller in which society as we know it crumbles with an unsettling question mark.

‘That fear of the unknown was something that really excited me,’ Esmail (Mr Robot) tells Teasers. ‘In this story, we never tell you, really, what the disaster is. It’s a mystery. It’s ambiguous. It’s something that the characters have to debate over and analyse. Even towards the end, you’re still not quite sure what’s happening.’

There are hints at what’s going on; cyberattacks appear to be a key component. But this uncertainty, Esmail argues, is much truer to the average person’s experience of a crisis – as anyone who spent hours of their lives wiping down shopping during the pandemic could testify – and presented an opportunity to flip the disastermovie format on its head.

‘What was interesting,’ the writerdirector explains, ‘was this idea of taking the tropes of the disaster genre, which usually involves focusing on spectacle, and inverting it by making the characters the priority, and really pushing those disaster elements off into the distance.’

That’s not to say there isn’t spectacle in Leave the World Behind. Oil tankers run aground on busy public beaches, planes fall from the sky, and self-driving Teslas go haywire. But the film is as much chamber piece as disaster movie, with the conflict between a small group of characters from all walks of life, trapped in an isolated location, reflecting where we are as a society in 2023.

‘There was something about the way they clashed with each other in the setting that really resonated with me,’ says Esmail, who quickly moved to adapt Alam’s novel after reading it in 2020. ‘The book zeroed in on the polarisation that does occur during a crisis. It really ends up dividing us, more than uniting us. I wanted to focus in on that.’

Surveyed by Esmail’s agile camera, the bulk of the action takes place in an immaculate Long Island house that Amanda (Julia Roberts), Clay (Ethan Hawke) and their kids (Farrah Mackenzie, Charlie Evans) are renting for the weekend. On the first night, G.H. (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la) turn up on the doorstep unannounced, dressed to the nines, claiming to be the owners. They’ve returned after a major blackout in the city, something that no one can verify because both the internet and phone lines are down.

Amanda is a prickly misanthrope, immediately untrusting of polite G.H. and his brash, unfiltered Gen-Z daughter, their race also unquestionably a factor. For Roberts, who previously starred in Esmail’s TV thriller series Homecoming, it was an opportunity to subvert her ‘America’s sweetheart’ persona. ‘Julia is a risk-taker when it comes to making the best film possible,’ notes Esmail. ‘She can play a really flawed character, and find the humanity in that person really effortlessly.’

Hawke plays similarly against expectations. Instead of the capable patriarch keeping the family together, Clay constantly fails in big and small ways (like getting lost without the aid of Google Maps), something that makes him oddly relatable. ‘That’s just a magic trick I’ve never quite seen rendered in such a pure and vulnerable way,’ Esmail says.

For well-spoken G.H., Esmail was looking for a ‘Hitchcockian archetype… an everyman who’s smart and capable, and always half a step ahead’, with Ali the perfect fit. Ruth, meanwhile, is a significant deviation from the book, where the character is G.H.’s older wife.

‘I wanted to let the audience know this is going to involve the messiness of people’

SAM ESMAIL

The change came about because Esmail wanted a Gen-Z perspective to the unfolding conflict, something that leads to plenty of humour in a genre not necessarily known for jokes.

‘A lot of thrillers can be really austere and serious, and I don’t think that’s how people react in crises,’ says Esmail, who also leans into satire, including an ingenious running gag about the Friends finale. ‘It’s never set up as a straightforward thriller. There’s a lot of humour that I wanted to inject into it to let the audience know that this is not by the numbers; this is going to involve the messiness of people.’

The film also boasts a pair of noteworthy executive producers – Barack and Michelle Obama, this being their first fiction film following Barack’s inclusion of the book on his famous Summer Reading List in 2021. ‘It was surreal and life-changing. Working with them was definitely the highlight of my career,’ Esmail beams, still in disbelief. ‘They’re some of the most brilliant minds out there. Having their insight was invaluable. They read multiple drafts of the script, watched cuts, and gave excellent notes. And they’re big movie lovers, so their priority was always to dig in and make this into a great movie.’

As the Obamas’ involvement perhaps makes clear, Leave the World Behind isn’t just entertainment – it doubles as a warning. ‘The intention behind the movie was to show how there are no easy answers or solutions,’ Esmail says. ‘There’s no hero’s journey. There’s no moral lesson. It’s really more of a reflection of where we’re at as a society. I’ve always viewed the film as a cautionary tale. If there is a message, it’s a warning about where our world could go.’

LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND

OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 24 NOVEMBER AND STREAMS ON NETFLIX FROM 8 DECEMBER.