'Leave The World Behind' brings the apocalypse home, but makes it kind of boring

Clay and Amanda Sandford (Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts) set off for a family weekend on the spur of the moment, renting a luxurious house on Long Island. However, a series of power outages and communication disruptions leads them to suspect something is amiss, and when the house's original owners (Mahershala Ali, Myha'la Herrold) arrive, tensions begin to ratchet up even further...

There are more than a few moments in 'Leave The World Behind' where it feels as though the movie probably could have been more successful as some kind of terrifying comedy than a weighty polemic thriller about divisions in divided America. One particular scene involving Teslas flying at each other in a kind of death stranding is far too weird for it not to be funny. The panicked expressions on Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke veers into a kind of screwball caper that might have made the thing more agreeable and entertaining.

It's not to say that 'Leave The World Behind' doesn't hold your attention. At nearly two and a half hours, the story builds pressure slowly and methodically as the pristine environment falls apart by a thousand cuts, becoming more unworldly and alien with each passing scene. There's a lot of very obvious messaging at work in the movie - be it the casual racism between Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke's bourgeois ineptitude, Kevin Bacon's extended cameo as a shotgun-wielding prepper - yet Esmail's script and direction tries to make it seem like it's so much more.

'Mr. Robot', the hit TV series that put him on the map and turned Rami Malek into a bankable star, had similar issues. The first season was a refreshing spin, mixing the psychotic loneliness of Paul Schrader's work with a techno-thriller angle that had a lot of weight and integrity to it, but it soon lost the run of itself. By the final season, 'Mr. Robot' had begun to spin itself into self-importance and irrelevance. In 'Leave The World Behind', there's a similar vibe. While at first, there's a hint of the supernatural at work and you think things are going towards a biblical apocalypse, the movie begins to shift gears and move towards something much more believable and terrifying. Yet, the characters are all so broadly appealing, you're left wondering why the world should survive if these are the kind of people left behind?

Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke bounce off each other with ease, and Roberts in particular takes a particular delight in playing a particularly angry and cynical character. Mahershala Ali and Myha'la Herrold are both cast well against them, with Myha'la correctly calling out the others for all sorts of trespasses and issues. As mentioned, Kevin Bacon has what amounts to an extended cameo, but his scene with Hawke and Ali is one of the best in the movie and keeps you guessing throughout. Farrah Mackenzie steals every scene she's in as their daughter, whose sole quest in the apocalypse is to see the final episode of 'Friends'.

Ultimately, 'Leave The World Behind' proves itself to be too uneven and long-winded in the execution. The cast are more than willing to give it their all, but the tonal missteps and the simple messaging undermines what could have been something really special. Instead, 'Leave The World Behind' isn't sharp enough or strong enough to make an impact.