Netflix’s Leave The World Behind Does Not Justify Its Over 2-Hour Length

Leave The World Behind is another film that attempts to embody the fear and uncertainty that comes with a rising apocalypse. What does the world look like as it is ending? This Netflix adaptation answers that question through the perspective of a married couple, Amanda and Clay, and their two teenagers, Rose and Archie, along with forced housemates, father-daughter duo G.H. and Ruth.

The film’s biggest two issues are its pacing and its runtime, which constantly hurt each other as the film is a grand total of two hours and twenty-one minutes.

Leave The World Behind is inconceivably slow-moving as the film tries to offer a setup for Amanda and Clay’s family vacation to a mostly isolated spot on Long Island, away from the hustle and bustle of New York City.

The set-up is far too agonizingly long for a film that wants to dedicate itself to being a story about the end of America, the beginning of a war, and the end of the world as everyone knows it. Instead of jumping into the action, Leave The World Behind introduces an eerie sense of feeling disturbed about a boat crashing onto a beach and a blackout before things start rolling.

The movie hits various starts and stops at points where it feels like the plot could really get rolling, only to be brought to a dead halt instead of a satisfying emotional or action-packed arc.

Leave The World Behind never offers spaces where it feels like its long runtime was necessary and that the narrative should have filled blank space with other grand ideas. Instead, the film only ever feels like it should be far shorter than it is.

Had the pacing moved a bit faster, Leave The World Behind could have easily shaved thirty to forty minutes off the total runtime. Still, that would not have made this movie more exciting.

The script never offers the characters or storylines substance or charisma for the audience to hold on to. Leave The World Behind plays off of questioning mystery without the satisfaction of developing the central conflict or offering substantial answers about what happens to the main characters.