If our society is eventually to collapse within itself this may be the way that collapse will begin.  Doomsday scenarios like this are cautionary tales that posit what could happen if we do not prepare properly, and also serve as studies of how people would react under the stresses of imminent catastrophe.  On the one hand, Leave the World Behind is a quite believable parable of how the American Empire might fall; on the other, its character study aspects are less convincing.

Sam Esmail’s film finds a well-to-do New York City family taking a spur-of-the-moment vacation to Long Island, renting a house for a weekend.  The Sandford family (Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Farrah Mackenzie, Charlie Evans) isn’t too concerned when their car’s GPS stops working, or their internet connections fail.  The arrival of an oil tanker on a local beach is more serious.  Then the rental home’s owners, the Scotts (Mahershala Ali, Myha’la), arrive, cutting short their stay in New York City.  As no news can be found and the odd happenings escalate, paranoia begin to grow and trust begins to decay.  What is happening to the world?

The story is told with perhaps too much deliberation and cinematic panache.  Things are certainly disquieting, as they should be, what with an utter lack of communal contact and the horrible noise attacks that occur and the strange behavior of the local animals, but the director piles it on with artwork at the house changing from scene to scene and spiraling overhead shots that made me vertiginous.  This is all built up rather brilliantly, especially the scene where the family tries to go back to the city and is foiled by the eeriest traffic jam imaginable.

And yet . . . the film fails, in my opinion, to convincingly portray the human emotions of confronting the end of all that is ordinary.  Where is the fear, the panic?  Jets  begin to fall from the sky (which, somehow, cannot be felt or heard a few miles away) and oil tankers run aground yet no one loses their composure.  The story’s focus is on the distrust between the white Sandfords and the black Scotts, a buildup of sexual tension and the almost complete lack of people anywhere in the area (is Long Island really that barren?  I hardly think so).  Issues are raised that I am still thinking about, and perhaps as an intellectual exercise this film is better than I am rating it.  But under this story’s circumstances I would expect more basic, primal behavior than what I witnessed, especially from the teenagers, who seem altogether too casual about the facts being withheld from them.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  19 February 2026.