Three Years On, Sam Levinson’s Family Thriller Still Packs a Punch Despite Its Slow Middle

“Leave the World Behind” wants to be a tense, isolated thriller about a family trapped in a house during a technological collapse. It mostly succeeds, but the film struggles to balance its two competing impulses: a slow-burn character study and a fast-paced disaster movie. Sam Esmail directs and writes the adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s novel, and he leans on a strong cast led by Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, and Myha’la to sell the quiet dread.

The setup is simple. Amanda Sandford arranges a weekend getaway for her husband Clay and their children, Archie and Rose. They rent a luxurious home, and everything goes wrong almost immediately. Their devices stop working, and two strangers, G.H. Scott and his daughter Ruth, show up at the door seeking shelter. Amanda is suspicious. Clay trusts them. The film spends its runtime figuring out which impulse is right.

Trailer, via Netflix.

The Collapse

The film’s central trick is the loss of technology. Amanda sees a man buying vast amounts of canned food and water while shopping. Later, the family avoids an oil tanker crash on the beach. Back at the house, the TV and internet fail, and deer stare at them. These small details build tension before anything major happens. The film trusts its audience to feel unsettled before it shows the full scale of the disaster.

The emergency notification arrives late in the night, flashing across every channel. The next morning, Rose complains that she can’t watch the finale of Friends. Amanda checks her phone and finds four alerts: two about the blackout on the East Coast, one about a hacker attack causing the outage, and a fourth breaking alert with scrambled text. The deer outside have grown into a much larger herd standing motionless in the backyard.

Clay drives to town to fix the internet, while G.H. heads to his neighbor’s house. Clay gets lost and misses a few seconds of radio news about the cyberattack’s environmental toll in the Southern U.S. The film keeps the audience in the dark alongside its characters, which works until the pacing stumbles.

Two Families, One House

The core of the film is the relationship between the two families. Amanda distrusts G.H., while Clay accepts him. The film plays this tension straight, letting the two men talk politics, religion, and class without ever resolving the suspicion. It’s a deliberate choice to keep the story contained, and it mostly pays off.

Ali and Hawke play their roles with restraint, and the chemistry between them carries scenes that could easily fall flat. Myha’la also holds her own as Ruth, giving the film a younger perspective that grounds the adults’ paranoia. The film’s best stretches are the quiet conversations between the two families, even when the situation grows dire.

Where It Falls Short

The film’s middle section drags. After the initial setup, the story slows to let the family process what’s happening. This is where the film loses focus. The disaster looms, but the film spends too long circling it instead of committing to it. The tension built in the first hour dissipates as the film repeats its central idea without adding new information.

The film also leans heavily on the deer. They appear repeatedly, growing in number each time, but the film never fully explains what they mean. Are they a warning? A symptom? A coincidence? The ambiguity works early on, but by the third act it feels like a cheap trick.

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Comparing the Families

The film’s strengths are its performances and its willingness to sit with uncertainty. Its weaknesses are pacing and a refusal to fully commit to its premise. “Leave the World Behind” is a solid, sometimes excellent thriller that stumbles in its middle stretch.

AFI Fest · Julia Roberts · Leave the World Behind · Mahershala Ali · Sam Esmail · Thriller