Netflix film “Leave the World Behind”, which was released a few week ago, is a very familiar type of thriller which does not bring anything new or fresh into its genre territory. This is a fairly competent product on the whole while supported well by its several prominent main cast members, but it only reminds us of a number of similar films including M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film “Knock at the Cabin” (2023), and you may be all the more disappointed due to its rather fizzling finale.

The movie begins with Amanda Sandford (Julia Roberts) and her husband Clay (Ethan Hawke) leaving their residence in New York City along with their kids Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) and Archie (Charlie Evans). For a rather misanthropic reason, Amanda suddenly decides to have a family vacation in some town of Long Island, and her husband and their kids have no problem with that as looking forward to having a little fun private time at a big and slick modern house rented to them, though Rose is more occupied with finishing watching all the episodes of a certain famous TV comedy series from the 1990s.

Things seem to be going well on the first day of their vacation, but then odd things begin to happen around them. When they are later spending some time at a nearby beach, something quite unexpected occurs the shock and surprise of everyone at the beach. When they return to the house while quite baffled about what they witnessed at the beach, they find that all the communication lines including Wi-Fi are cut off for an unknown reason, and this certainly frustrates all of them as being disconnected from the world outside.

And then another unexpected thing happens in the middle of the following night. A black man who introduces himself as G.H. Scott (Mahershala Ali) comes along with his daughter Ruth (Myha’la), and G.H. tells Amanda and Clay that he is actually the owner of the house who rented the house to Amanda. According to G.H., there is a massive blackout in New York City and its surrounding area, and he and his daughter, who have supposedly stayed in the city during Amanda and Clay’s vacation in their house, come to the house just for being safe and comfortable.

Because she only communicated with the owner of the house via e-mails, Amanda becomes quite suspicious about who these two unexpected visitors really are in contrast to Clay, who suggests that they should let these two visitors stay inside the house at least for a while. After all, G.H. really looks like what he claims to be, though Amanda still has doubt and suspicion on the identity of G.H. and his daughter.

Meanwhile, things keep getting more odd and ominous around the main characters. Every TV channel only shows the sign of some serious incident of national emergency, and all the phone lines remains cut off as before, though water and electricity are somehow still supplied to the house. For finding out what is really going on outside the house, Clay drives his car to a nearby town, but he only witnesses a very disturbing moment in the middle of his drive to the town.

Amanda and Clay try to tell their kids as little as possible for protecting them, but it does not take much for Rose and Archie to realize that something really weird is happening around them. At one point, Rose spots more deer around the house, and then there comes a little spooky moment when she and her older brother enters a little place outside the house at one point later in the story.

The screenplay by director/co-producer Sam Esmail, which is based on the novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam, keeps things rolling via throwing a number of more strange things into the story. There is a frightening moment involved with a bunch of vehicles on the road, and we later get a tense scene as G.H. and Clay visit the house of a certain figure who may tell them what is really going on besides giving them a bit of medical help.

We never get bored during its rather long running time (141 minutes), but the movie unfortunately comes to spin its wheels during its last act without bringing much depth to its story and characters. While it often stumbles in case of character development, the movie merely gets us more baffled and confused along the story, and that is the main reason why its finale feels like a big letdown even though it answers most of the questions in the story.

Anyway, the main cast members of the film try as much as possible with their respective archetype roles. While Julia Roberts, who also participated in the production of the film, does not hesitate to be unlikable as required by her part, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, and Myha’la dutifully feel their respective spots as required, and Farrah Mackenzie, Charlie Evans, and Kevin Bacon did leave some impression despite their rather thankless jobs.

In conclusion, “Leave the World Behind” is not a total waste of time mainly thanks to its solid cast members, but I still think it could be more tightened for more tension and suspense while bringing more depth to its story and characters. Esmail, who previously made his first feature film “Comet” (2014) and then made the acclaimed TV drama series “Mr. Robot”, is a fairly good director as far as I can see, but the movie does not impress me much as failing to reach to its goal, and I am already ready move onto whatever I will watch next from Netflix.