Leave the World Behind, Netflix’s buzzy new film from writer-director Sam Esmail and based on the popular 2020 novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam, imagines how Americans would cope if the daily technologies of life were stripped away and information was cut off at the pass by some unknown enemy. It is more thought experiment than substantive film, in that the characters are intentionally self-absorbed, conceited, not particularly three-dimensional, and, in some cases, full-on nihilistic.

The film begins with Amanda Sanford (Julia Roberts), the matriarch of a nuclear family, declaring to her husband Clay (Ethan Hawke) that they will be going on a spontaneous vacation because she has come to the realization that she hates people. Not much more is said on the matter; it’s pretty much smash cut from this conversation to the ornate home outside of New York City that the family will be staying in. They are essentially just far enough from the city to be considered “out of town.”

Following an indefinite loss of cell service and wireless internet, and a freak accident involving a beached oil tanker, the family’s first day in relative seclusion ends with the rental home’s owner (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter (Myha’ala) arriving at the door and claiming that a massive blackout in the city has left them with nowhere else to go. Initial distrust between the two families soon takes a backseat to an increasingly desperate effort to avoid paranoia over the possible explanations for the technological failings. With no information coming into or out of the home, they are left only to speculate.

In short, the film meditates on the fragility of our infrastructures, the inability for the contemporary person to function without information technologies, and the class disparity that leaves some in a more privileged position to evade the most brutal ramifications of modern warfare (at least, for a time). Again, it is an interesting thought experiment with limited emotional appeal.

Even so, the more unbelievable the specifics of the events become, the more this film looks like fantasy as opposed to eerie premonition. Beginning with the ability for some foreign agent to hack into and shut off the entire eastern seaboard’s broadband and phone services (and the U.S.’s satellite system, among who knows what else) in one fell swoop, minor bits of information the audience learns throughout the film can come across as silly. As is the nature-versus-human metaphor constantly lingering around the edges.

But Esmail mostly maintains the stakes and tension well. He takes the novel’s slowly unraveling narrative and complements it with slowly unraveling camera movements (or otherwise ominously static shots). In specific moments, this careful editing and cinematography gives way to more chaotic, more rapid cross-cutting between parallel events with potentially dire consequences.

The film, as a result of these choices, is highly watchable, even if certain moments do not share the intensity of the style (Clay’s encounter with a failed car GPS and a woman on the side of the street, for instance, would come off far less nerve-racking were it not for intense music and rapid editing). And the quality of the dialogue often fails to rise to the level of the capable actors delivering the lines.

Still, if this is Hollywood’s alternative to the gaudy, globe-spanning doomsday films in the vein of Roland Emmerich, we could do worse.

Leave the World Behind: B-

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As always, thanks for reading!

—Alex Brannan (Twitter, Letterboxd, Facebook)