It is not at all common to see and hear Julia Roberts bitch and say he hates people. The star of Pretty Woman He does it because the script for Leave the World Behind asks him to, the film that this Friday was uploaded to the catalog of Netflix and it already tops the list of the most viewed films.
Surely its success is not in Roberts’ outbursts, but in the cast –Ethan HawkeMahershala Ali, Kevin Bacon y Myha’la (Dumb Moneyo The power of pennies)-.
And, once the movie starts, in the state of permanent tension that exists on both sides of the television, netbook or device from which you want to watch it.
Strange things happen that Friday when Amanda (Roberts) wakes up early in New York and decides to rent a house on Long Island for the three-day weekend. It’s clear that the routine of the city overwhelms them a little, especially her. The dynamic of the couple seems like this: he is more tolerant than she, more impulsive, distrustful and almost authoritarian.
They have two children, one a teenager, in full hormonal upheaval, and a 13-year-old girl, and when they arrive home they find that the cell phones don’t work, the phones don’t work either, neither the TV nor the iPad where little Rose (Farrah) Mackenzie, actually, 18 years old) is desperate because she can’t watch the latest episode of Friends.
A series of unfortunate events
The strange events range from a huge oil ship heading directly to the beach, where it runs aground, to the appearance, out of nowhere, of dozens of deer in the garden of the house, with, let’s say, intense behavior.
And it is added that at night GH (Ali) and Ruth (Myha’la) knock on the door, who say they are the owners of the house and that, since there was a blackout in the city, they decided that they could spend the night there, at home, since they cannot get to New York.
As the film is told mostly from Amanda’s point of view, doubts immediately arise: are that father and his daughter the owners of the house with the pool? What is really happening?
It won’t be long before we know: it would be a massive cyber attack on the United States.
The novel that Ruman Alaam published in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, has, of course, paranoia about the unknown as its center.
The plot will cross the “couples”, and Amanda and GH will have dialogues on their part while Clay and Ruth share a vaporizer in the garden.
The film never stops entertaining, due to the misinformation, the clues heard in a couple of dialogues, and the fact that the four know that they cannot get to the city. To do?
Sam Esmail, he director of Leave the world behindan open-ended thriller, relies on the photography of its usual lighting artist, Todd Campbell (some episodes of Stranger Things), was the creator of the series Mr. Robotwith Rami Malek, who would be Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. Former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, are two of the producers of the film in which Julia works again with Esmail, after the series Homecoming.
Conspiracy theories are always attractive, and the fate of this film is based on them.
“Leave the world behind”
Drama/Suspense. United States, 2023. Original title: “Leave the World Behind”. 138′, SAM 16. Of: Sam Esmail. Con: Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, Myha’la, Kevin Bacon. Available in: Netflix.