The Review: Leave The World Behind

Leave The World Behind -3/10

The amount of hatred I have for this movie is incredible. I am a semi-rational person and I understand that art is supposed to be subjective. But the movie Leave the World Behind is legitimately one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life. L. suggested that we watch this and I was not super opposed to it because I didn't know anything about it but was aware that two big actors were in it. I was very surprised and I discovered there was a big actress in it as well. So we started this movie and right now I am trying my best not to jump to the ending that pushed me over the edge and just stick with the fact that this movie had no redeeming qualities. I have watched some really terrible movies where I can say at least it was shot well or at least it had good music. This is not one of those movies.

This starts off with a lady named Amanda who does not like people. She wakes her husband up and pretty much says “Hey we are going on vacation and I'm already packed.” So they head out on the road and we're introduced to her husband named Clay who is a professor and their two children named Rose and Archie. Archie is just an asshole. There is nothing else about his character that is shown in this movie. He is purely there just to be a shitty teenager. The daughter Rose is obsessed with the show Friends and that's about it. The children have zero layers to them. So they stop off at a store and Amanda sees this guy buying a whole bunch of water and canned food and thinks nothing of it. They get to the new house that they're staying at and nothing is working in terms of electronics. The daughter Rose is upset because she wants to watch the last episode of Friends. Later on some random ass deer just show up on the property and while they're at the beach this gigantic tanker runs ashore and I am mad at the amount of people that had to run out of the way. They watch this thing come from miles way coming straight at the beach and stood there long enough to have to run for safety. These people are all stupid.

Later on during the night after having some drinks (because you never see this family eat all they do is drink alcohol) this man and a young girl show up. The girl could be 13 the girl could be 27 you're never quite sure. This man named George says he's actually the owner of the house that they're renting and there was a blackout in the city so they had to come back home. He is acting suspicious as fuck and the girl has a terrible attitude. I'm thinking that they're there to rob the place and have been casing the joint or something. It doesn't help that he does not have his ID on him and he also had trouble unlocking a liquor cabinet to his own house. Plus they made him act suspicious. This was a deliberate acting choice made by this man in this film. Amanda seems to be kind of racist but they never flat out come out and say it but the daughter kind of alludes to it. By the end of this movie I did not want Amanda or Ruth on the screen at the same time because I was getting sick of hearing them bicker with each other. They want to stay at their own house for the night but Amanda is pissed off and doesn't like the idea but her husband decides to let them do it.

So the next morning Amanda turns on her phone and for a second it shows some messages about blackouts and something about hackers being responsible and a bunch of gibberish. The daughter Rose sees a lot more deer and the husband Clay decides he's going to drive into town to figure out what's going on even though there's no GPS in the car and the phone doesn't work. None of that stuff works. They still have power and water. These people are not starving they are not in danger. They just don't have internet. I live this life weekly having AT&T. This woman stops Clay on the road speaking Spanish and freaking out and he can't understand what she says, he just drives off leaving her and then all of a sudden this giant drone drops off a bunch of leaflets. George heads over to one of his neighbor's house cause it does it turns out that he actually does live at this house and the place is smashed up. He ends up going over to a beach and finds a crashed plane with a whole bunch of bodies that he somehow did not see as he was walking on the beach. Next thing you know another plane crashes near him and he comes back home soaked.

The daughter Rose tells her brother Archie that the deer were trying to talk to her but he does not give a single fuck about her or anything else. They end up going walking through the woods and find this little shed and Archie acts like an asshole some more and then ends up getting bitten on the leg by a bug. These kids decide to go walking through the woods wearing flip-flops and shorts. George gets back to the house and he doesn't tell his daughter Ruth or Amanda what he saw and why he's soaking wet saying that he fell down into a swimming pool. Later on he lets Amanda know that he tried using a satellite phone and even that didn't work and next thing you know dubstep starts playing and everyone drops their knees and pain. Clay comes back home with one of those leaflets from the sky and the son can read it cause he saw it online and it says Death To America in Arabic writing. Amanda's like we need to get out of here nobody has a plan we need to get out of here and so they decide to go to her sister's place but the road leaving is fully jammed up with electronic cars that drive themselves. Next thing you know these things start turning in the missiles and instead of driving on the shoulder where no cars are driving she decides to drive straight towards them dodging them along the way.

George lets Amanda know about some of the work he does and said that this might be part of a conspiracy. Meanwhile outside Clay is smoking weed with the girl Ruth and Amanda and George get drunk and start dancing very terribly to music and they start getting close to each other. They look like they're about to start kissing or something and then she remembers she's married and he remembers that he has a wife who might be on a plane that's in the ocean right now. The next morning the daughter is gone because reasons and the asshole son Archie teeth start falling out. He wakes up, pulls one tooth out, and decides to do it like four more times. I would have been done pulling after the first one because I'm not an idiot. George and Clay head over with Archie's toothless ass in the backseat to the survivalist guy whose name is Danny. Danny start sharing all of his different conspiracy theories with them and it gets to the point where he's like I'm prepared you guys aren't I'm sorry your son's teeth are falling out of his face but I can't do nothing about it and guns are drawn. Clay admits that he's a punk ass bitch and he just wants to save his son and they end up getting some medication.

Amanda and Ruth are also looking for the daughter Rose and get surrounded by deer that they spend way too long screaming at and then the deer finally leave. Amanda and Ruth also see that the city is being bombed. Meanwhile we got toothless boy in the backseat of the car and George trying to make an agreement with Clay to do whatever it takes to survive. In the meantime Rose has broken into a house, managed to sit at a table eating all of the snacks and drinking all of the Welch's drink, and finds that the house is fully stocked with years worth of food plants growing inside of it and thousands of DVDs to watch (the same child that doesn't know basic shit knew how to insert and start a DVD player). She pops in the final episode of Friends the theme song starts playing she smiles and the movie ends.

I spent maybe the next three minutes during the credits screaming at the screen into a pillow. This movie was trash from the get-go. There were camera choices made that I don't understand why you would do it unless you just felt like being wacky that day. There was suspenseful music building up to nothing. The modern songs that they used in this movie did not fit any single scene that they were used in. Everyone in this talked like they were written by robots. If this movie was even sort of realistic these people would have gotten to a physical fight with Amanda. She was so unlikable that I don't understand why her husband even liked her. Her husband seemed kind of happy-go-lucky and just aloof. I don't want to talk about the son anymore or the stupid daughter. The guy George and his daughter were more tolerable than the other family but the daughter just chose to pick fights with Amanda every single chance she got. There was absolutely nothing about this movie that I liked.

I can't say anything good about it and even with the worst of movies I will give it a 1/10 and I've given some films a 0/10 but this is the first film where I have to get give it negative points. Because even the films I rated a 0/10 were better than this. This was straight up trash and too long of a movie and at one point we thought we were almost done and only six minutes had gone by. For anyone saying that this movie is incredible and the people who don't like it just don't get it you can go to hell. This was a straight up terrible film that was not written well, was not directed well, and you managed to take Academy Award-winning actors and make them act as if this was a terrible student film. I wouldn't even suggest this as a hate watch. I would suggest this as what not to do when directing a film. I would suggest this as what not to do when you're adding music to a film. I was suggest this as what not to do when writing a story and especially when ending a story. Fuck this movie. I wish it did not exist.

Julia Roberts as Amanda Sandford

Mahershala Ali as G.H. Scott

Ethan Hawke as Clay Sandford

Myha'la as Ruth Scott

Kevin Bacon as Danny

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