A mysterious event strands a New York family in their Long Island Airbnb – along with its owners – in Leave the World Behind, now streaming on Netflix. This exceptionally well-crafted thriller from Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail, who adapted Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel of the same name, boasts some compelling performances and a strong sense of atmosphere… but after luring you into its captivating setup, it goes nowhere, and takes its time getting there.

That’s a real shame, because if Leave the World Behind were a pilot for a TV show or the first installment of a miniseries, audiences would be immediately hooked: rarely has a catastrophic event been portrayed with such engaging ground-level intimacy. As its own standalone film, however, it really couldn’t be more disappointing after a dynamite first half.

Leave the World Behind stars Julia Roberts as Amanda Sandford, who books a spur-of-the-moment getaway when she wakes up early one morning in her New York City apartment and realizes she hates the vibrancy of city life. Together with husband Clay (Ethan Hawke) and teenage kids Archie (Charlie Evans) and Rose (Farrah Mackenzie), the family heads to Long Island for an impromptu vacation.

But something more than a little strange happens during the family’s visit to the local beach, as an immense oil tanker mysteriously washes ashore. Odd occurrences continue into the evening, and after a blackout that cuts the family off from the internet, the owners of the Airbnb they’re staying at show up at the front door.

G. H. Scott (Mahershala Ali) and adult daughter Ruth (Myha’la) claim to have headed to their second home after the blackout complicated things in the city, and while Amanda is immediately suspicious, Clay is more accommodating. Unlike last year’s Barbarian, Leave the World Behind doesn’t play up the any potential malice in these characters, and its soon clear that they, too, are lost within a much larger scope that will play out over the course of the film.

And so these two families navigate each others presence while trying to understand the bigger picture of what’s going on out there. There’s a lot of weird stuff going down in Leave the World Behind that seemingly occurs without explanation. It’s frustrating, but it does a good job of placing the audience in the shoes of its lead characters, who struggle to understand the world as it collapses around them.

As we watch the film, we assume there is some plausible explanation for events that have occurred, one that might even manifest by the end of the movie. But that isn’t quite the case. While Leave the World Behind does indeed suggest what could be going on, it doesn’t add up in any way that easily clicks into place, and we’re left with an increasingly large pile of questions by the end as opposed to a sensible resolution.

That’s what will tick most viewers off: clearly, there’s a lot going on in Leave the World Behind that will continue after the credits start rolling, both in the macrocosm of the larger world and the microcosm of these bewildered characters on Long Island. But the film simply ends, and it’s not an ambiguous ending that confronts viewers with the unknown. ‘We do know how this story goes,’ the filmmakers seem to be saying, ‘we’re just not going to share it with you.’

Is Leave the World Behind worth seeing? It’s too well-made to immediately dismiss, with strong performances and some wonderfully tense intercut sequences that give director Esmail a chance to strut his filmmaking credentials. And while it’s hard to imagine many viewers coming away satisfied with what they saw, there’s enough to like here to warrant a recommendation with some serious reservations

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