On any given night, there’s a good chance that I have a hard time falling asleep and I find myself doing gloom scrolls on Instagram or TikTok. Most of the time it’s just me looking at mindless videos from friends around the globe, but I’ll occasionally find myself seeing a trend appear in the random reels. The movie “LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND” became said trend so I threw it on to see exactly what people were collectively watching on Netflix. I jotted down a number of notes while I watched so i’m going to share some reflections but it’s going to be broken out into some categories that will make sense if you’ve screened the movie.

Adaptation from the page to the screen:
At some point during the movie, I did a google search to see if I could snag a screenshot from a specific scene in the movie. It was at that point that I learned that this movie was adopted for the screen from a novel that I hadn’t read. This isn’t exactly the type of fiction I go out and try to read on my own accord, but if someone would have recommended it to me I may have read it. Having seen the movie, I’m kinda curious to read it to see what decisions the director made for the adaptation of the novel. I’m leaning towards not reading the book

Art of the Implausible:
When I watch movies, I really enjoy the process of allowing myself to enjoy the art of implausibility. When I saw this movie, it occurred to me that many may see this and feel alarmed that something like this can happen. I’m firmly not in the camp… but the film did however make some overtures to undertones and sentiments in America that are very real.

They kinda go out of their way to say that this isn’t the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard. So it’s totally plausible that this would occur in the Non-Hamptons/Non-Martha’s.

Race:
I admittedly think about race more than most. I don’t really know why or when it started. I think I happened to come up at a specific time in America where “race” seemed to be imbedded in everything I listened to, watched or read in the 80s and 90s. I haven’t had a chance to talk to anyone directly about this movie but one of the questions I would ask is what aspects of ‘racial implications’ did they happen to pick up during the movie. The film goes out of its way to introduce some heavy handed RACE themes when they introduce the main group of characters when the blackouts occur.

How many home invasions occur in America where the perpetrator wears a Tux?

Friends:
I admittedly didn’t watch friends. It kinda had its heyday when I got to college and watching scripted TV was not a priority of mine when I fumbled thru my 20s. A poignant comment was made in the movie about how the show harkens back to nostalgic time that never existed. A very damming and kinda truthful thing to say about a show that depicts a New York I’ve never set foot in. Chuck Klosterman had an opinion that Friends did something that no other show has ever really done before. After college, there’s a period in life where a group of Friends become the immediate family that you surround yourself with. Marriages and kids splinter that core group of “friends” but for a number of years the spirit of that show is something that is very real. I kinda think something was being said generationally by way of the kid, her age and detachment of what the fuck is going around her.

So what was this movie really?
Not entirely sure if this was an end of times movie, as much as it was something I would liken to Night of the Living Dead. When I saw the movie, I sorta saw a circumstance that immediately put central characters to distill a number of real prejudices out of their system before trying reconcile what it means to be a human. If you want to be technical about it, there’s a Die Hard movie where a “Patriot” hacks America and brings it down from the inside. I don’t think it’s a particularly good movie. I would kinda describe this as a B+ episode of Dark Mirror…. I will however concede that it made me think at times.