On December 8 Netflix released a new movie starring Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke and several other wonderful actors and actresses I didn’t recognize, aside from a small role by Kevin Bacon. The film was suggested to me by a friend who said the cause of the global problem in the movie was unclear and could be a pole shift – as there were ships and planes crashing from navigation problems, GPS was down, and a flock of flamingos visited their Long Island swimming pool. While those few elements might be explained by the crust of the planet moving over its interior, it was pretty clear not too far into the movie that the main problem for the characters was a cyberattack shutting down most technology (cell phones, internet, TV, radio, navigation….) But several other nonsensical elements kept appearing; such as including a tick-borne disease that progresses incredibly fast, an unexplained and unrealistic dangerous noise that has no cause, and strange animal behavior including a scene with deer reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The Birds.
Clearly the producers want to install feelings of a world completely out of control, with multiple causes of ever increasing fear and helplessness, and to convince us that under such conditions our base instincts will take over and we will be attacking each other within a few days.
What scares me the most about this effort is the list of producers.
“Leave the World Behind is here and it’s chilling. Starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, and Ethan Hawke, the apocalyptic thriller from Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail tells the story of two families as they fight for survival amid an inexplicable blackout. Only one thing’s for sure: There is no going back to normal…. “I had been interested in doing a disaster movie for a while, and I specifically wanted to do one surrounding a cyber attack because I don’t think a lot of people have a concrete idea of what that would look like or how detrimental it would be, not just in America, but globally,” writer and director Esmail told Netflix. “The impact of technology on society is something that I’ve always been fascinated by because I really do think it dramatically changed the way we interact and evolve as people.” The film is based on the bestselling 2020 novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam, who also serves as executive producer of the film alongside Barack and Michelle Obama, Tonia Davis, Daniel M. Stillman, and Nick Krishnamurthy. Find out more below, and stay safe out there.”
I didn’t care for the unrelated loose ends and unexplained phenomenon that didn’t seem well-thought-out. But it’s just a movie. Unless it means something that the Obamas were in on producing it. In which case the movie actually succeeds in scaring me a little, just not in the traditional way they may have intended. What do you think?
FWIW, I posted this two weeks ago at The Mass Extinction Event, where you might want to follow me on substack before WordPress completely dies off.
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