The World is Collapsing in Trailer for Sam Esmail's Thriller LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND

Netflix has released the first trailer for the intense new psychological thriller Leave the World Behind. The movie comes from the creator of Mr. Robot, Sam Esmail, and it stars Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, and Kevin Bacon. This actually looks like a pretty crazy movie!

In the film, “Amanda and her husband Clay rent a luxurious home for the weekend with their kids, Archie and Rose. Their vacation is soon upended when two strangers — G.H. and his daughter Ruth — 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.”

Esmail previously talked about receiving script notes from the former President, Barack Obama, who is a producer on the movie, and those notes scared him: “In the original drafts of the script, I definitely pushed things a lot farther than they were in the film, and President Obama, having the experience he does have, was able to ground me a little bit on how things might unfold in reality. I am writing what I think is fiction, for the most part, I’m trying to keep it as true to life as possible, but I’m exaggerating and dramatizing. And to hear an ex-president say you’re off by a few details…I thought I was off by a lot! The fact that he said that scared the f*ck out of me.”

With the film, Esmail attempted to create a different kind of disaster movie than the ones he grew up watching, and he explained: “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. 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 be on the characters, and their reaction. The spectacle of the disaster is secondary and off in the distance.”

The movie also stars Myha’la Herrold, Farrah Mackenzie, and Charlie Evans. Leave the World Behind will be released in theaters on December 8th!