“There is no going back to normal,” warns G.H. (Mahershala Ali) in the teaser for Leave the World Behind, Sam Esmail’s adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel. Though brief, the trailer offers all kinda disconcerting imagery: wrecked boats, stopped cars, maybe a tidal wave, and whatever it is that Clay (Ethan Hawke) sees in the sky. Red things in the sky can’t be good. Something has gone terribly awry, and four strangers (plus children) are staring at the end of something.
It might have been nice for the teaser to include a teensy bit of the normal that no one’s going back to; Alam’s novel is a slow burn, and this too-brief glimpse at the adaptation is all dread, dread, dread—dread that ought to build, not get dumped on our heads all at once.
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Here’s the synopsis:
In this apocalyptic thriller from award-winning writer and director Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot), Amanda (Academy Award winner Julia Roberts) and her husband Clay (Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke), rent a luxurious home for the weekend with their kids, Archie (Charlie Evans) and Rose (Farrah Mackenzie). Their vacation is soon upended when two strangers — G.H. (Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la) — arrive in the night, bearing news of a mysterious cyberattack and seeking refuge in the house they claim is theirs. The two families reckon with a looming disaster that grows more terrifying by the minute, forcing everyone to come to terms with their places in a collapsing world.
But trailers aren’t movies, and with Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail writing and directing the adaptation, it’s almost certain to be the nuanced, unnerving, terse movie this story deserves. The cast also includes Kevin Bacon, which somehow makes perfect sense.
Leave the World Behind is in select theaters November 22nd, and on Netflix December 8th.
This post was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.
