Leave the World Behind Director Talks Movie’s Divisive Ending

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Leave the World Behind Director Talks Movie’s Divisive Ending

The ambiguous conclusion of Sam Esmail’s latest project, Leave the World Behind, has left audiences divided. Nevertheless, the filmmaker is clear about the direction he wants to take the movie, stating that he intended for it to end in a “provocative way.”

Based on Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel of the same name, Leave the World Behind follows a family of four as they spend their weekend in a luxurious AirBNB home. However, their idyllic vacation soon comes to a halt when two strangers who claim to be the homeowners deliver shocking news. This forces the two families to live together as they unravel the mystery behind the strange happenings.

During the film’s final moments, a series of eerie events start to occur all at once, though what transpires after remains unknown. The film ended with Friends-obsessed Rosie (Farrah Mackenzie) watching the show’s final episode in someone else’s basement bunker, concluding the film with “I’ll Be There For You” playing in the background.

Considering the film didn’t provide some sort of explanation about what happened after, audiences’ opinions about the film are — of course — divided. But Esmail knew it was going to happen, and he didn’t want to end his film any other way.

“We knew going into this that the ending was going to be polarizing, but we did not want to pull punches on it,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “I think in a traditional disaster film, a genre that I’m a huge fan of, so no knock on disaster films — I mean, Day after Tomorrow is one of my favorite movies — but the expectation is at the end of these films, your cast of characters overcomes the disaster and the world reverts back to some sane semblance of normalcy. I knew that I wasn’t going to do that.”

He added, “As a film lover, I’m excited when I leave a movie wanting to spend hours talking about it. And when you end a film with sort of a pat answer, where the heroes do overcome something, those tend to be the movies where they kind of come and go … so we knew making this film that we wanted to go in this provocative way, and we assumed the risk that it would divide people — and hopefully in a good way, because that provokes conversation.”

Who stars in Leave the World Behind?

Besides Mackenzie, the apocalyptic thriller boasts an impressive cast, including Julia Roberts as Amanda, Ethan Hawke as Clay, Mahershala Ali as G.H., Myha’la as Ruth, Kevin Bacon as Danny, and Charlie Evans as Archie.

Leave the World Behind is now available on Netflix.