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Leave the World Behind Ending Explained: Did the abrupt end to the movie leave the viewers in darkness?
The movie ends on a rather curious note when Rose, Amanda's daughter, finally gets to play the last episode of Friends in the bunker in which GH Scott and Sandford's family are supposed to hide.
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Leave the world behind shows an imagination of how the world might end.
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America seems to be suffering at the hands of its top-notch Technology.
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No amount of money or power saved lives, as in case of the Thornes.
Leave the World Behind is one of the most popular films released this year. Sam Esmail's artsy direction follows Amanda, Clay Sandford, and GH Scott's family on a beach getaway as they try to escape from the mysterious apocalypse swallowing the city rapidly. Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke portray Amanda and Clay Sandford, who take their kids, Rose and Archie (played by Farrah Mackenzie and Charlie Evans), on a beach vacation. The owner of the opulent house the Sandfords are renting, G.H. Scott (Mahershala Ali), returns home with his daughter Ruth (Myha'la) to escape the unexplained mayhem that is roiling the city. After that, as more bizarre and apocalyptic things happen, like plane crashes, herds of deer swarming into the backyard, and Archie's teeth mysteriously falling out, the two families are compelled to live—and survive—under the same roof.
The Ending Explained
The ending shows Rose, Amanda's daughter, being the only one who understands the signs of nature, implying that the world is ending. Rose first spotted the sudden migration of deer into the house as she followed them into the woods with Archie. Rose goes to the Thorne's house to collect supplies for the family, where she ends up discovering the bunker that the Thornes created for times like these. There, she puts on the DVD of Friends and plays the much-awaited last episode of Friends. Although Rose is shown to collect the supplies in the book and reunite with her mother, Amanda, the movie takes a very open stand to it again. Sam leaves it for the audience to decide what happens next. The feeling might be unsettling, but the audience will be hopeful. Alam believes that the careful construction of GH Scott is so that the audience will believe that they all made it to the bunker and waited for the madness to end.
The film's conclusion seems to advocate going back to the 1990s. Naturally, technology had not yet been established in the 1990s. While the internet was somewhat accessible then, few people had smartphones, few owned laptops, and streaming services had not yet been popular. Ruth views Friends (1994–2004) as nostalgia for a nonexistent period, but Rose, who missed out on the pre-internet age, might find herself living in this idealized version of history. Rose may hope for a future where people read newspapers to learn the news, watch DVDs, read books, peruse magazines, and let their kids ride their bikes outside. Rose has shown interest in nature, 90s television shows, and tangible media.
Did the world end because of a Cyber-attack?
G.H. and conspiracy theorist Danny (Kevin Bacon) drive to meet to assist Archie as his teeth start falling out after something bites him. Even though Danny finally decides to help them, a tense standoff prompts G.H. to surmise that these events might be the product of a military operation meant to set people against one another to destabilize a country. Ali's beautiful acting convinces the audience of what might be the cause of the unexplainable incidents happening in the movie, as he defines it through his experience.
He establishes that the cause of what might be happening to the world is a result of the three-step theory of isolation, synchronized chaos, and civil war, highlighting how cyberterrorism can destabilize a mighty nation. In a way, the explanation given in the movie holds a mirror to increasingly technologically dependent America and, to an extent, to the world, the danger that it might bring upon the human race. This was also highlighted by showing the failure of artificial high-tech devices such as Tesla cars' auto running and colliding with each other because of their automated driving system. He determines that both families must camp in the neighbor's bunker to live.
![Kevin Bacon denying help to GH scott and Clay Sanford [Netflix, Leave the world behind]](https://www.pinkvilla.com/images/2023-12/1703792471_1200-720-31.jpg "Kevin Bacon denying help to GH scott and Clay Sanford [Netflix, Leave the world behind]")
Was the ending fair to the audience?
But that's just his theory. Leave the World Behind is based on the best-selling book of 2020 by Rumaan Alam, which paints a vivid picture of how the world would end. While not everyone approves of the modifications made to the Leave the World Behind novel, some choices—such as casting Ruth as G.H.'s daughter rather than his wife—finally improved and made the film more realistic.Many questions remained after the film's conclusion, such as what led to Archie's illness, where the glass-shattering sound originated, who was responsible for the attacks, and why they were occurring. As a result, viewers came up with several theories. Leave the World Behind on Netflix only addresses some of the significant problems raised in the book, which is reasonable given that the film has no narration or character insight into the future. Explanations of occurrences beyond the main narrative's events and outside the town where the families were stranded were regularly included in the book.
Rumaan Alam, on the other hand, told Variety that she was rather amused with the film's ending. She believes that ending the movie with the theme song of the sitcom' Friends, ' I'll be There for You, is a reminder that art is a slave to its creator. The audience is left wondering with questions, but at the same time, their soul is satisfied in thinking that the characters safely made it to the neighbor's bunker while all hell broke loose.
Is this how the world will end?
The movie shows that the planned and well-executed cyber attack might not just be from a single country. Still, many nations could have joined hands together, as towards the end of the movie, the red-colored pamphlets found by Clay Sanford were written in Urdu, while the ones found by Kevin Spacey's friend were written in French, all issuing the same warning of death. The 'rogue' attacks also speak volumes about America's political relationship with the world. Barack Obama, the former president of the United States, produced the movie and contributed to the screenplay. His understanding of how the government might respond gives the film a terrible yet genuine feel. Everyone outside the White House was too preoccupied with trying to survive and protect their families to give the president much thought, especially since it seemed like the world was ending in Leave the World Behind. The president's name is kept a secret within the fictitious universe of the film, and Rose is the only one of the characters to specifically mention a president until she narrates a scenario from The West Wing.
Esmail correctly foresaw what would happen next. He told The Hollywood Reporter before the movie's premiere in mid-November, "We knew going into this that the ending was going to be polarising, but we did not want to pull punches on it." "Well, in a conventional disaster movie, which is a genre I enjoy, so no offense to disaster movies,"
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