Leave the World Behind (2023)

	Directed by: Sam Esmail	COUNTRY USA GENRE Apocalyptic thriller NORWEGIAN TITLE Leave the World Behind RUNNING TIME 140 minutes
	Produced by: Julia Roberts Marisa Yeres Gill Lisa Gillan Sam Esmail Chad Hamilton
	Written by (based on the novel by Rumaan Alam): Sam Esmail

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Amanda Sandford	Julia Roberts	½
G.H. Scott	Mahershala Ali	½
Clay Sandford	Ethan Hawke	½
Ruth Scott	Myha'la
Rose Sandford	Farrah Mackenzie
Archie Sandford	Charlie Evans
Danny	Kevin Bacon	-

Review

This psychological apocalypse thriller is unfulfilled and discursive in a distinctly 2023 manner, but treats its topic seriously and has moments of dramatic intensity scattered throughout its 140 minute running time. The director is Sam Esmail, creator of the renowned TV series Mr. Robot, and he has assembled a fine cast to embody the fairly disparate characters created by novelist Rumaan Alam. Because although Leave the World Behind falls neatly into the genre of apocalyptic fiction, the main focus is not on the looming threat to the world, but on how our six protagonists deal with the uncertainties they are faced with. The power is in the unknown and unseen, and Esmail's realization of this gives the film an eerie atmosphere in which you never quite know who to trust or what to believe in. The film has a slow and loquacious drive towards its fairly elegant but very inconclusive ending. To say it ends on a cliffhanger would perhaps be a slight exaggeration of the suspense created, but it does leave so many loose ends that I suspect both Alam and Esmail must have ulterior motives with it.