It was an extraordinarily rainy day and night in the usually sunny Singapore, a perfect time for a chilling horror film. We settled on the thriller Leave the World Behind. Boy I was not ready for the ride I had unwittingly strapped into.
Some context: I have consumed my fair share of Thai, Korean, Japanese, and American classic horror, with little trepidation. I’ve watched the supposed scariest of scary — The Exorcist — and LAUGHED because its iconic scene was so comical.
This film genuinely scared me silly.
[mild spoilers here] And in the absence of ghosts / spirits / demons, the supernatural, jump scares, gore, or even a classic antagonist to appear on screen.
So why was I shaking in my seat? Because everything that transpired in the film was eerily likely to happen in our reality, and every day our reality seems to inch forward towards theirs.
The horror films that have hit hardest with me are always ones about cults, because cults exist and the horrorific acts they commit very real. That is why Rosemary’s Baby, Midsommar, and the likes, were masterpieces in my books. Yet even they, hinged on the possible, have a measure of gore and explicit assaults by baddies.
In LTWB, the core events started and are happening off-screen. In this contained, still somewhat safe, perimeter, you are watching aftershocks: leaving you to imagine the full extent of horror and the impending fate of our protagonists. Think Bird Box or the Quiet Place, but more removed, and on the other end of the disaster (before, not after).
You watch the city crumble in a distance and part of the anguish is sitting at the knife-edge between hope, and the growing realization that the inevitable is heading towards you. (Or, maybe it won’t?)
[Mild spoilers] The scene in which an oil tank approaches the shore, first indifference, then ignorance, then the dawning realization of danger — perfectly sums up the family’s (and their individual) reaction to what’s happening.
Leave the World Behind had excellent pacing. For the first half of the film, tension is pulled to just the right taut. The parallel escalation to a climax, drawn by each groups’ adventures, was exquisite.
It built up sufficient clues, yet left enough ambiguity in the first third, leaving room for many possibilities; resolving them patiently and neatly as the story unfolds, without contrivity. You have to pick up the links yourself, it never hits you in the face.
I love also that characters and their narratives were kept consistent. An possible apocalypse is no time for 180° change in character, but aspects of their personalities that are latent in everyday life may manifest — they did, and did so believably!
The camera works, sound design, and directorial choices were – i’m running out of positive descriptors – par excellence. I appreciated that the director brought back the ‘horror score against silence’, ‘slow zoom-ins for a suspense’. It was incredibly well done, standing out as a stylistic enhancement, when it could easily have been jarring if done wrong.
Other directorial highlights are the strange phenomenon of animals, jets, ships — these large-scale abnormalities reminded me of the best and creepiest parts of NOPE.
Most of all, LTWB had a certain restraint that many new movies lack, in a time where blockbusters are prone too BIG, DRAMATIC moments to top predecessors.
This restraint lent a rawness and realness to the characters and their responses to the world, and is why it was terrifying.
Besides that, I loved Ethan Hawke in this film. Never knew he was such a funny guy. He plays his role as naive professor well and every micro expression and action was spot on. I couldn’t help liking his character immensely, he makes me laugh, even when unintended, every time he’s in the scene!
Q 