The new Netflix movie “Leave the World Behind” has several very impressive visual effects. At the start, there is a huge oil tanker slowly running aground while many people on the beach watch. This looked like they really commissioned a huge tanker and ran it into a beach for real – not computer-generated effects. There is another scene where there is a log jam of driverless Tesla cars all crashing into each other on a highway, due to some kind of ongoing electrical attack from a source that was never fully defined in this story. There is a scene where many deer outside of a log cabin seem to be insane. They are standing in front of a young woman who looks like she is in a trance, and does not move. This is one scene that did look like it was computer generated. This is one of those films where all of the loose ends are never fully resolved and I have never been a fan of a movie like this.
Leave the World Behind stars Julia Roberts as Amanda Sandford and Ethan Hawke as Clay Sandford who are a husband and wife with two children who decide to rent a house for a week. Very shortly after moving in, several strange things start happening, starting with electrical problems in the house a big blackout in New York City and then news of commercial airplanes dropping out of the sky. Very soon after moving in the owner of the house G. H. Scott played by Mahershala Ali and his daughter Ruth, played by Myha’la show up and want to move back into their house because of a blackout in New York City. Understandable conflicts arise from their request to move into the house, mostly between Amanda and G.H.’s very hostile daughter Ruth. Ruth’s rude hostility I thought was way too much considering the extreme circumstances.
Later in the story, Rose, the daughter of Amanda and Clay runs off and cannot be found. Considering the insane circumstances of imminent worldwide doom, this 10 year old girl running off on her own makes very little sense – as does the ending that involves this 10 year old girl and the final episode of the TV series “Friends”. The problem with this movie is that there are way too many loose ends that ruin what started out as an interesting idea for an end of the world story.
I do not understand why the Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this movie are as high as 75%, with my rating about 65% and a pass on this movie – mainly because of the weirdness throughout.
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