There’s little to be confused about as to why one would be instantly intrigued by Netflix’s Leave the World Behind. Based on the popular novel of the same name, the film stars powerhouses Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, and Kevin Bacon and comes from Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail. However, the first trailer for Leave the World Behind is another matter entirely as the twisty, turny, apocalyptic film reveals very little about what goes on in it or why it’s all happening.
If you’ve read the book, things might make a little more sense to you, but based on the trailer, which you can watch below and on YouTube, Leave the World Behind looks like some weird cross between Jordan Peele’s Us and M. Night Shyamalan’s Cabin the Woods, which sounds like an incredible combination. Roberts and Hawke play a married couple renting a lavish house with their kids when a cyberattack begins to cause the downfall of the world and a couple shows up on their doorstep seeking safety in what they claim to be their own home. All is not what it seems and as the world falls apart so does the group of people.
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Netflix is gunning for Oscars with this one, lining up an all-star cast and basing it on an insanely hot property. Esmail wrote the screenplay as well and if there is anything we know he’s good at it, it’s semi-futuristic tales of the downfall of mankind thanks to computers. It is genre-fair, of course, but the Academy has been much more open to that the past decade and Netflix is happy to provide. The real question is what the movie truly holds in store with strange red mists falling from the sky, windows cracking for no apparent reason and Ali’s character clearly knowing more than he lets on.
If you live in the right cities you can catch Leave the World Behind in theaters on November 22. The rest of us can watch it on Netflix on December 22.
