Leave the World Behind borrows heavily from dozens of other paranoia thrillers that had much lower budgets. But you add Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, and Ethan Hawke plus get the Obamas to executive produce, and you suddenly have a big Netflix release that everyone watches. But that’s the point of getting Roberts, Ali, Hawke, and the Obamas on your side.

The flick stars Roberts and Hawke as a married couple on vacation in the middle of nowhere when the cell lines, internet, and streaming content goes down. Then comes a knock at the cabin and more portents of doom… wildlife acting funny, planes crashing, dogs and cats living together….

This is a mixed film for me. I’m giving it a high score but I wish it were higher. The film opens with a monolog from Roberts that felt stilted and overwritten… it “as you knows” the audience and kind of feels forced and unnatural. Thankfully the movie tends to slip into a more believable writing and actin mode… most of the time.

The flick is full of VERY suspenseful thriller moments… it can be very convincingly mysterious and frightening as it builds a chilling atmosphere. The music does a lot of the heavy lifting, though sometimes it goes too far into melodrama. The movie tends to pull out of these occasional nose dives though… but I wish it could have better managed its B movie tendencies.

There’s a chilling message that I imagine is hand-waving enough to let different people get out of it whatever they want. Paranoid? Got you covered. Think there’s another war coming? Check. Think its a warning? Yup. Thinks its a promise? Maybe.

The end of the film has an interesting ironic exclamation point on it. It’s certainly smart in that it follows character motivations and film themes well. However, it does border a bit on being too on the nose. But it’s also good enough for a conversation and that’s more than a lot of movies offer. I wasn’t satisfied while also feeling it completely apt.

Yeah, this is a good upjumped B movie. It’s genuinely thrilling and suspenseful while sometimes feeling a bit too melodramatic. The acting is solid even if the writing wavers a bit. The good parts outweigh the bad though… this is a very good film (that could have been great).

Score: 88