Member-only story
Leave the World Behind — Review: A Perplexing Experience
by KJ Proulx
This was a film I was very eager to sit down and watch. I love the series Mr. Robot and the first season of Homecoming, so seeing that writer/director Sam Esmail was working on a feature film excited me. His writing and direction have been spectacular in the past. Well, the best word I can use to describe my feelings after watching Netflix’s Leave the World Behind is Perplexed. The first two acts of this film had me glued to the screen, however, the final act went in so many directions and ultimately left me unsatisfied. Here are my thoughts.
A family in desperate need of a vacation, takes a last-minute trip to a rental house, only to arrive and find out a possible cyberattack is happening. Without any connection to the rest of the world due to these outages, they do their best to wait it out, until two strangers end up on their doorstep. They claim to be the homeowners and beg this family to allow them to stay. This is the set-up, but it becomes far more eerie and ominous as the film progresses. Certain revelations send this film in an entirely new direction. The problem I had with this film though, is the fact that it ultimately feels unfinished. I’m not talking about a film with an open ending; I’m talking about a film that straight up cuts off at the most random point after a bunch of information is…
