Warning: This article contains spoilers for Leave the World Behind (2023).
Sam Esmail’s new thriller, Leave the World Behind, ends with two major stand-offs and a short epilogue that is more satisfying than it really has any right to be. The film spends its final minutes cutting back and forth between a tense confrontation between G.H. Scott (Mahershala Ali), Clay Sandford (Ethan Hawke), and G.H.’s doomsday prepper former contractor, Danny (Kevin Bacon), and a terrifying encounter that Clay’s wife, Amanda (Julia Roberts), and G.H.’s daughter, Ruth (Myha’la), share in the woods with a strangely aggressive herd of deer. The latter scene is preceded by an argument between Amanda and Ruth about the former’s coldness toward seemingly everyone outside of her family.
Amanda, who opens Leave the World Behind by proclaiming that she “f***ing hates other people,” admits that she doesn’t want to be so closed-off and angry all the time. She’s simply lost too much faith in humanity to believe that anyone other than her husband and her kids, Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) and Archie (Charlie Evans), deserves any kind of kindness from her. However, when Amanda later realizes that Ruth has become surrounded by the same herd of deer that her daughter saw earlier, she makes the uncharacteristically brave choice to try to scare off the deer and, in effect, save Ruth’s life.
How Leave the World Behind sets up its final act
As dangerous a decision as it is, it pays off. The deer leave them be. Moments later, Amanda and Ruth find themselves staring together at the distant skyline of New York City as various bombs begin to detonat ..
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