Leave the World Behind: Julia Roberts doomsday thriller has spooky Optus echoes

Director: Sam Esmail (Comet)

Starring: Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha’la.

Rating: ****

On the brink or on the blink?

Remember a few weeks ago, when half the nation’s internet went missing for half a day?

Well, depending on who your current telco might be, Leave the World Behind has the potential to bring back a lot of unpleasant memories.

At the very least, this well-crafted and disarmingly bleak doomsday thriller will leave you wishing we weren’t all so dependent on a decent digital signal.

As the movie begins, a well-off family of four have impulsively ditched their posh New York City pad for an even posher weekend getaway upstate.

Less than a day into their stay, the quartet notice that their devices cannot hold a connection to the web.

Married couple Amanda (Julia Roberts) and Clay (Ethan Hawke) initially pay no mind to the unexplained interruption.

She is a high-powered ad exec. He is a high-ranking college professor. They are both busy people, and a little spell off the grid couldn’t hurt, surely?

Their teenage kids Archie and Rose (played by Charlie Evans and Farrah Mackenzie), however, are not inclined to take this unplanned downtime lying down.

In fact, it is the children, not the parents, who first notice all is increasingly not right with the world around them.

A visit to the beach ends with an eerily unmanned oil tanker inexplicably running itself aground. Hundreds of deer begin prowling the perimeter of the property where the family are staying. No active stations can be found on TV or radio.

With each passing hour, stuff just keeps getting weirder. The owner of the holiday home, George (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la) appear at the front door, asking if they can come in.

Drones in the sky start dropping leaflets printed in an indecipherable font. The roads in every direction are jammed with driverless cars that are not observing the speed limit.

And every once in a while, a piercing, indescribable noise surges to an ear-splitting level, and then stops just as suddenly.

Expertly directly and acted, Leave the World Behind (based on the novel by Rumaan Alam) wastes no time getting you in, and then getting on your nerves.

Though its protagonists will often make certain mistakes which beggar rational belief, there is a consistent, nagging plausibility to the scenario explored here that cannot easily be dismissed, nor forgotten.

Leave the World is now showing in cinemas in general release, before premiering on Netflix on Friday December 8.

CAT PERSON (MA15+)

***

General release.

If the title rings a bell, try rewinding your mind to 2017. It was back then that a short story of the same name in New Yorker magazine suddenly owned the internet. This feature-length adaptation does a great job when sticking to the original blueprint of author Kristen Roupenian, and her car-crash chronicle of a young, twenty-something woman’s doomed relationship with an older man. However, the many fans of that riveting piece will be surprise, intrigued and perhaps even outraged to learn there is some fresh material here that will not be to everyone’s liking. Nevertheless, the first hour is both irresistibly compelling and wryly amusing thanks to the pitch-perfect performances of the movie’s two leads. Emilia Jones (from the Oscar-winning CODA) plays Margot, a whip-smart college student who develops a mid-strength crush on a dude who frequents the cinema where she works part-time. Nicholas Braun (aka Cousin Greg from TV’s Succession) is Robert, whose wisecracking demeanour will gradually point this mismatched couple in the direction of a bedroom. As was the case in print, this spectacularly unsensual encounter is simultaneously provocative, funny, depressing and unfailingly perceptive about shifting power dynamics. However, a later left-hand-turn in to the realm of a revenge thriller threatens to undo much of that earlier great work.

THE ROYAL HOTEL (MA15+)

***

Selected cinemas.

Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick play Hanna and Liv, two American backpackers who have run out of funds midway through an extended Australian holiday. The pair have no choice but to take the only job available, working and living in a hardscrabble pub in the middle of the Outback. It isn’t long before the brawny, all-bloke clientele are ripping through every page in the toxic masculinity textbook. With each derogatory comment, blue joke and dead-eyed stare coming their way, Hanna and Liv begin to feel as if they are losing their mind. It is the women’s slow disintegration from with-it to without-a-clue that draws the clinical focus of filmmaker Kitty Green (The Assistant), and results in a solid number of powerfully uneasy scenes. However, it gradually becomes clear that Green is unsure of how to end this cautionary, spirit-sapping tale on the right restorative note. Some viewers will be left pondering if they have been put through the wringer for no particular reason. Inspired by the brilliant 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie, which is well worth streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Originally published as Julia Roberts doomsday thriller comes with spooky reminders of the recent epic Optus fail