Survival Mode
The film based on Rumaan Alan’s novel of the same name arrives to Netflix on December 8
In the Netflix film Leave the World Behind, the apocalypse doesn’t look like brain-hungry zombies or Earth-invading aliens. For the Sanford and Scott families, it looks like blackouts, cyber-attacks, and unlikely (though deeply untrustworthy) unions with one another. In the trailer for the film, which arrives on Dec. 8, Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, and more, shift into survival mode and hope to make it out on the other side with their family still intact.
In the clip, Amanda Sanford (Roberts) and her husband Clay (Hawke) take their two children on a getaway to a luxurious vacation home they rented for the weekend. While they’re there, hoping to hit reset before going back to normal, the supposed owner, the New York financial advisor G.H. (Ali), returns with his own daughter (Myha’la). “We were driving back to the city, then something happened,” he explains vaguely to the Sanfords. His tone is even, but Amanda operates from a place of suspicion that challenges his authority.
“Mahershala’s poignant everyman quality mixed with his undeniable charisma make it nearly impossible for him to deliver a substandard performance,” director Sam Esmail told Netflix of working with the Moonlight star. “That was what G.H. needed, a deep-hearted accessibility that lets him be your avatar into the story.”
It’s only when they begin sorting out plans for potential co-habitation that news breaks of a cyber attack that has impacted the entire country. Soon, lights are shattering, glass is cracking, and self-driving cars are killers on the road. All anyone wants to do is protect their family, but doing so at the end of the world is easier said than done.
Leave the World Behind is based on Rumaan Alan’s novel of the same name, fittingly released in 2020. The film also stars Farrah Mackenzie, Charlie Evans, and Kevin Bacon.