Directed by Sam Esmail, Netflix's latest buzz-worthy film Leave the World Behind centers on two families who are thrown together amid life-threatening events. On the first night of their vacation, Amanda Sanford (Julia Roberts), her husband Clay (Ethan Hawke), and their teen children Archie (Charlie Evans) and Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) get a surprise visit from the owner of their Long Island rental, G.H. Scott (Mahershala Ali), and his daughter Ruth (Myha'la). The two strangers have fled a blackout in NYC and want to stay for the night, but Amanda is inherently mistrustful of others (and a bit racist, since she doubts that G.H. is the real owner). As the Internet and cell service goes down, followed by several terrifying, unexplained events, Leave the World Behind depicts a different kind of disaster movie, playing out the ways the discord brings two very different families together and leaving viewers without most answers to how the world is ending.
This focus on the intimate rather than the cataclysmic makes for a fascinating yet often frustrating watch, especially once viewers get to the vague, needle-drop ending. Neither the film, which premiered on December 8, nor its source material, Rumaan Alam's 2020 novel by the same name, are all to worried about giving a play-by-play of how the world is coming to an end. Still, it is helpful to go through all the symbolic threads that the film's conclusion leaves dangling for viewers to tie together. Read on for our breakdown of the final moments of Leave the World Behind, from where each character ends up in the last few scenes, to what Esmail and Alam have said about the film's overarching themes.
