‘Leave the World Behind’ trailer: Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali star in Sam Esmail’s Netflix drama [Watch]
Oscar winners Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali are ready to face the end of the world.
On Tuesday, Netflix released the first trailer for “Leave the World Behind,” Sam Esmail’s adaptation of the novel by Rumaan Alam. The apocalyptic thriller, which also stars Ethan Hawke, Myha’la, and Kevin Bacon, debuts in theaters starting in November before arriving on the streaming platform on December 8.
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Here’s the official synopsis provided by Netflix:
In this apocalyptic thriller from award-winning writer and director Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot), Amanda (Academy Award winner Julia Roberts) and her husband Clay (Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke), rent a luxurious home for the weekend with their kids, Archie (Charlie Evans) and Rose (Farrah Mackenzie). Their vacation is soon upended when two strangers — G.H. (Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la) — arrive in the night, bearing news of a mysterious cyberattack and seeking refuge in the house they claim is theirs. The two families reckon with a looming disaster that grows more terrifying by the minute, forcing everyone to come to terms with their places in a collapsing world.
The trailer, which features the LCD Soundsystem song “Oh Baby,” shows brief images of the unfolding apocalypse – which starts with some kind of ill-defined “cyberattack” – in a fashion that, at least in teaser form, recalls the work of M. Night Shyamalan.
“The disaster genre is one of my favorite genres, and the trick that we did in this film that differs from most disaster films is that in that genre, the focus—the priority of the storytelling—is on the set pieces,” Esmail told Vanity Fair earlier this year. “It’s on the spectacle of whatever the disaster might be for that story, and the characters were secondary to that. They’re more there to react and become the audience avatar. What I think Rumaan did so well in the novel, and what I tried to capture in the film is to invert that and make the focus on the characters and their reaction. The spectacle of the disaster is secondary and off in the distance.”
Watch the trailer for “Leave the World Behind” below.
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