Leave the World Behind - A Movie Review

How much I recommend it: 7/10

Leave the World Behind is a Netflix film in the which cyberattackers take down the grid.

Throughout the film, we are only shown one little town in rural New York but presumably the attack is nationwide or even global.

Once the grid is down, cell networks fail. GPS doesn’t work. Electricity goes out in NYC. Oil tankers start washing up on shores. And planes are falling from the sky.

I really enjoy these type of dystopian stories and I’ve read a great number of them. One of which, One Second After, felt very similar to this one.

Essentially, in the first few days of the disaster, everything is chaos and confusion. Slowly, people start to piece together what is going on and how to cope with their new reality.

And in every dystopian story, there is one commonality. The biggest problem is not starvation, lack of medication, or even lack of shelter, it’s fellow man. When people are desperate, confused, or hungry, normally nice people turn into monsters. There is one scene where we see this happen. One of the main characters goes to the house of an acquaintance for medication and the acquaintance almost ends up shooting them.

I especially like seeing the unique interpretation that different authors put onto their version of dystopia. For example, there is a scene where the main family pulls up to the highway and there are white cars stopped as far as the eye can see. On closer examination, they are all Tesla’s straight from the dealership. Right as this is being realized, more Teslas come speeding up the road and crash into the caravan of cars. The hackers had taken control of Tesla’s self-driving functionality and used that as a weapon.

Overall, good film. There were a lot of fancy camera tricks and visually stunning moments throughout. A very enjoyable watch.