Let’s attempt a Leave The World Behind Movie Analysis in depth. We’ll identify the subtle but important aspects of the plot, explain the broader correspondences and thereby unpack the deeper message contained in the film from beginning to end. THERE ARE MANY SPOILERS AHEAD SO STOP NOW AND WATCH ON NETFLIX IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE YET. This was a very deep movie so you are in for quite a ride! Ready? Let’s go! 🔥🔥⚡️⚡️
| Movie | Leave The World Behind |
| Director | Sam Esmail |
| Writers | Sam Esmail & Rumaan Alam |
| Based On Book | Leave The World Behind by Rumaan Alam |
| Producers | Red Om Films, Higher Ground Productions, Esmail Corp |
| Main Cast | Julia Roberts as Amanda Sandford Mahershala Ali as G.H. Scott Ethan Hawke as Clay Sandford Myha’la as Ruth Scott Farrah Mackenzie as Rose Sandford Charlie Evans as Archie Sandford Kevin Bacon as Danny |
| Cinematography | Tod Campbell |
| Editing | Lisa Lassek |
| Music | Mac Quayle |
| Distributor | Netflix |
| Release Date | November 22, 2023 (limited theatrical) December 8, 2023 (streaming) |
| Running Time | 2.35 Hours |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English (US) |
Leave The World Behind is divided into 6 parts, an intro and 5 parts. We will walk through each one and pick apart the key scenes. Let’s begin this Leave The World Behind movie analysis:
Introduction
Opening shot is of the Planet Earth, probably a set up for a planetary event? Then it moves to a beautiful early morning in New York. Clay is in his bed and Amanda, his wife, is already up and busily packing. With all the commotion, Clay stirs and wonders why Amanda is packing. She says she couldn’t sleep and complains about how turbulent the year was for both of them so she takes the liberty to rent a beach house in Long Island.
Cleverly hidden in this scene is the number 666. The number 666 is known as the Mark of the Beast as identified the bible, Book of Revelation. Why is this number here? We’ll soon find out 😈 😈 😈 but its context is Time: the 6 in ’76 on the mug is a reference to a year, the 6 on the left analog clock references an hour and the 6 on the right digital clock is also an hour. It’s not coincidence that those numbers are prominent while they are having this conversation.
Clay seems taken by surprise at the sudden plan but Amanda is strongly motivated to take this trip. When Clay pushes further to find out her reasons, she admits that she wants to get away because she “f*****g hates people”.
Amanda is clearly the brains in the relationship, at least from this interaction. She took the lead and initiative planning this trip, also anticipating and neutralizing Clay’s potential excuses not to go. At first she lies about her motivations but in a moment of clarity and honesty to the man that she clearly loves, she admits that she has deep disgust about the state of the world and that is why she is determined to get away. Amanda wants to get away, fine, but why now? As Amanda stares out the window speaking from the heart, we get the distinct impression that this urge to take a vacation mostly likely comes from within, from a very raw and sincere place, free from lies and appearances, an instinctual place! It turns out that instinctual thinking will be one of the things that save the family. More on this later.
MONICA: We’re throwing Phoebe a bachelorette party.
PHOEBE: Yeah. Sorry, boys — this ride is closing.
Friends Series Finale, S10, EP17, The Last One
Now we see Amanda, Clay and their two kids, a family of four, on the way to the vacation spot. Amanda is on the phone with a co-worker explaining that the rental listing advertises the place as “Leave The World Behind” and she seems pleased by that. Clay is driving. Her son Archie is in the back seat playing what appears to be a violent video game and his sister Rose is sitting next to him. They have a brief interaction and it appears that Archie is a bit mean to his sister. Rose is watching the series finale of the Friends sitcom on her tablet but unfortunately the show glitches and freezes as she loses her internet connection so she can’t finish her show😢. Rose is not happy! Meanwhile the song Misled by Kool and the Gang is playing on the car stereo as they approach their destination.
Part 1 – The House
Baby, baby, what’s your claim to fame?
Misled by Kool and the Gang
Got me out of bed, heard you call my name
What’s this crazy place, you want to take me to?
Tell me, what’s the price if I go with you?
The family shortly arrives at the house where they will be staying, which seems lavish! As they enter the house there is a beautiful picture on the wall in blue with a series of EYES 👁️ 👁️ 👁️ on it, this is clue that will make sense later. The children settle in quickly and have already found the pool. Amanda explores the house and she is deeply impressed by what she sees and is on a high. It’s almost as if she’s claiming ownership of the space as her own, she feels she is meant to be here even though we know the house is just a vacation rental. To her, it is much more.
Amanda leaves the house again for some supplies at the local marketplace. As she’s loading the groceries into her SUV on her way back she notices a man packing a surprising amount of supplies into the back of his pickup right next to her. This man is Danny. She smiles at him in friendly way but he just stares back at her and even appears to be annoyed. She hastily looks away.
Back at the house Clay is preparing a meal and watching baseball on the TV. Clay quit smoking but his wife offers a pack of cigarettes nonetheless to indulge him this one time on vacation. She also invites him to some sexy time to go along with his cigarettes🤭🤭. Clearly she loves this man and cares about his happiness and well being.
White Lion, the First Sign
The family gathers and heads to the beach. Rose is the first one to notice a big boat on the ocean from their location on the shore, this is important. Archie is gawking at some pretty girls as they walk past and doesn’t seem to care because he has other things on his mind 👀. Rose continues to pay attention and is noticing the ship getting closer and closer to the shore. None of the others seem to care too much about it…yet.
Some time has passed and the ship is dangerously close now and others on the shore are taking notice and seem anxious. Amanda is now concerned and alerts Clay. Archie is sound asleep and has to be awakened as the family makes a hasty escape away from their spot on the shore to safety. We also now see that the ship is an oil tanker called the WHITE LION. We saw the 666 before which was fairly subtle and uneventful but this is the first real sign that things are not right. The cargo ship crashes to the shore and people scatter in fear.
Incidentally, the White Lion is also the name of the ship that brought the first Africans to the colony of Virginia in the 17th century, which is interesting. It’s meaning here however may be more general.
Recall that the Lion is regarded as the King of the Beasts. Beasts or animals in general are driven by RAW INSTINCT, the sea represents the subconscious mind and the beach or dry land represents the conscious mind. The coast then symbolizes the space where the subconscious and conscious mind meet i.e. the bridge. The arrival of this strange vessel on the shore might then represent the event when primitive instincts in the subconsicous make an unexpected, violent intrusion upon the conscious mind. This is the first sign to the family that the world is falling apart.
Is it possible that the number 666 indicated earlier in this Leave the World Behind movie analysis, foreshadowed these strange events? More than merely a mark, 666 could signal a time or a mind set or a state of being that immediately precedes widespread upheaval and radical transformation which, we will see, is exactly what happens.
The lion is the king of the beasts and his mark is 666. Perhaps the number serves a sign to herald the coming of the beast and the rulership of pure animal instincts? All plausible.
Rose, who is a young child and as such has yet to develop fully, is the first to notice the ship. So one could say that, in her family, she is the one most attuned to the activity of the instinctual mind. Navigating that instinctual space comes naturally to her and that is why she is the first to notice a lot of the strangeness going on. This trait will ultimately be the thing that saves them all!
The Police Officer explains to Clay as they leave for safety that something went wrong with the Nav System and that this isn’t the only ship that’s been grounded in the area.
The Deer
Back at the house, Amanda discovers that there is no Wi-Fi and Clay notices that the TV has no signal so he can’t watch the game. This is not good but they don’t seem too concerned, the kids too appear to have forgotten the event with the White Lion and are playing in the pool.
They notice a couple deer coming into the yard and Clay remarks that it’s a good omen, at least according to Ancient Mesoamerican mythology (He’s right of course but he doesn’t know it 😉). Deer have some religious significance in that culture apparently…hmm interesting!
It’s now night time and the kids have gone to bed, poor Rose still can’t watch her show because there’s no Wi-Fi😢. Meanwhile Clay and Amanda have wine and play a game of Jenga. The Jenga tower is now at a good height.
Clay is going on and on with a weird spiel about a female student’s work where she reconciles the role of media as both a reflection and an escape (again he’s on point but doesn’t know it). Clay is a teacher and somehow his spiel is giving us the impression that there may be something more going on between him and that female student perhaps? We hope not 😬😬 for dear Amanda’s sake.
Amanda interrupts him because she hears something moving outside, this is her instinctual mind again. The women of this family have powerful instincts! Clay doesn’t hear it at first but when he does he gets a weapon, just in case, and answers the door. At the door is a dignified looking man and a young woman who has the number “96” tattooed on her left shoulder (more 6s).
The Owners Arrive
It turns out that the man is the owner of the house, George G.H. Scott and the young woman is his daughter Ruth. They could not announce their arrival beforehand because there was a blackout and communications are down.
Amanda is very cold towards them (instincts again) but Clay is open and inviting. George explains that he was on his way to a home in the City when there was a blackout so he decided to head back to his second home where Clay and family are now staying because it’s the safer choice. Of course Amanda is suspicious of this story and does not trust George (and for good reason as we will see later).
Things get a little tense as George tries to negotiate a new arrangement with the renters. Amanda has already made herself at home and is unwilling to even entertain these people even though it is clear that they are the true owners of the house. Amanda is instinctual but she is also selfish and possessive. The pair of Ruth and George don’t get along at all with Amanda initially.
George and Clay on the other hand are the voice of reason and calm. Clay is the mediator of the situation. Trying to please Amanda on one hand and be as accommodating as possible to George on the other. Eventually George offers to refund 50% of what the couple pays, in cash, and they agree to stay in a room downstairs. This is significant!
Clay accepts the money but Amanda is still not comfortable with the arrangement. She asks George about his life and we learn that George has a wife who is an art dealer who is currently out of the country but expected back shortly. Amanda presses on and asks George for his ID and he is ashamed because he can’t find it in his pockets. He lost it! This is also significant.
Amanda is about to interrogate George more when a shrill buzz is sounded by the television as Ruth turns it on. Normal broadcasting is replaced by an ominous but vague National Alert System which advises of an “unrecognized emergency warning” of some kind. Things are getting serious now! Clearly something is seriously wrong in the world. Just then the Jenga Tower that Clay and Amanda were playing collapses right on cue.
So it’s now settled that George and Ruth will spend the night downstairs and the renters will remain upstairs. As they talk away from the others it is clear that George was not entirely honest. He knows more about the situation than he is letting on.
Also, at the same time, upstairs Amanda and Clay are talking we see they have also withheld the information about the White Lion crashing ashore. Where is the trust in this house 😜? Clay the mediator, true to form, explains that he didn’t tell them because it seem like “piling on”.
Meanwhile downstairs on the TV the emergency signal is interrupted for a brief moment with a map of the United States and we learn that a National Cyberattack has happened and this is the likely cause of the disruption in communications. It then cuts to white noise.
The Transformation Begins
Now that we know all the main players let’s define their symbolic roles for our Leave The World Behind movie analysis. We will use Freudian Psychology as our guide and model:
| Role | Person | Attitude |
| ID | Rose and Amanda | Primordial, Animalistic, Instinctive, Selfish, Pleasure seeking, Child-like |
| EGO | Clay | Realistic, tries to mediate between Id’s selfishness and Superego’s morality |
| CATALYSTS | Archie and Ruth | Facilitate change |
| SUPEREGO | George | Moral, upstanding, non-emotional, voice of reason, stable |
So the House itself is a model of the human psyche and the characters are parts of the psyche with their actions mimicking the function and role of that part of the psyche. The parts of the psyche according to Sigmund Freud are the Id (pronounced as the “id” in “squid”) which is the primal part present from birth. The ego is developed next then finally the superego a little later in childhood.
Each character in the story performs the role and function of different aspects of the Freudian Psyche, with the exception of Archie and Ruth. As we will see later, these are is the Catalysts that causes certain things to happen.
“Of all things, why the psyche?” you may ask. This is a creative choice by the writers of the movie but the correspondences are fairly obvious to anyone who is even casually acquainted with classical psychology. But this choice wasn’t coincidental by any means. Images, motion pictures have powerful transformative effects on the human mind, so maybe these symbols were chosen specifically for that purpose? Only Esmail and Alam know for certain!
A revolution of sorts is happening in the house/psyche and the order is changing. The superego (George) is the owner of the house but has agreed to share his house with the ego (Clay) and the id (Amanda) and thus becomes a guest in his own house/psyche where he was formerly the head. Because of the circumstances George must surrender and become subordinate to the activity of the id (Amanda/Rose). At first this is to keep the peace in the house/psyche but as we will see later this will be the key to all their survival!
The chaos of the world has provided a suitable opportunity for the id, normally situated in the background subconscious, to come to the fore and act freely through Amanda and to a greater extent Rose. It’s instincts that will lead the way today:
The id doesn’t trust the superego at first because they are different in nature. One is instinctive and the other is thoroughly rational, they must learn to live and work together in this new arrangement with Clay as the Ego mediating, trying to please both sides.
George is asked for his Identification but seems to have lost it, he “surrendered” it with his coat at the opera. This symbolizes Ego Death. This is a dissolution in one’s subjective sense of self. George literally can’t find his identification and now he can’t prove his identity. One’s identity is intimately tied to one’s sense of self and individuality. So, if you lose your identity you lose your individuality. This foreshadows a that radical George will go through later and is part of George’s process of surrender indicated earlier.
Remember that blue painting with the eyes from earlier? Well now that we have applied the model of the psyche we see that this painting is a subtle sign of transformative events to come and not merely interior decorating. This transformation has only started to take place within the psyche/house.
As you may know the EYE 👁️👁️👁️ is a very well known mystical symbol. People seem to struggle to unpack it but it’s simple really: the word “EYE” is play on the pronoun “I”. This is called a homophone, words that sound the same but are spelt differently. The mystical I/EYE in the painting is at once a symbol representing selfhood i.e. “the I” AND the faculty of vision i.e. “the EYE”; both of which are intimately linked. The pronoun “I” is a concept and therefore invisible to the sight but when a revolution in the psyche occurs it is accompanied by changes to the other “EYE” which perceives these changes in the physical world. It affirms a correspondence and harmony between the activities of the inner invisible world and outer visible world. Gnarly huh?
The revolution is literally being televised! The emergency broadcast on the TV is a signal that this “revolution” has begun in earnest but the specific nature of the change/chaos/threat is yet to be revealed.
The fall of the Jenga Tower as this broadcast plays symbolizes chaos but more specifically the collapse of the illusion of order and separateness. It actually also complements the symbolic loss of self by George, the superego. If the house is to survive this ordeal there must be change, erecting ivory towers of pride and separateness will not suffice. The 16th key of the tarot summarizes this idea perfectly.
As you can see, in a sudden catastrophic event “the Tower” is destroyed and the occupants are cast from it. Their world is turned upside down forever. Famous mystic Paul Foster Case said that the tarot is “a book disguised as a pack of cards”. Not merely a tool for divination but a true key to timeless wisdom!
The QR Code
At the end of Part 1 where the heatmap of the USA Cyberattack is shown, we finally get some info as to what is causing the strangeness. A cyberattack seems plausible actually, so we finally have some good info. But hidden in the map is a QR code.
Zooming in and enhancing this QR code we get the following. Try it on your own phone, it’s safe, I promise 😊😊😊.
The QR code leads to the Lake Shawnee Abandoned Amusement Park. What relation could this possibly have to the movie? Well, it could be one of two things: one, the easter egg is a set up for another project the producers have in mind. Probably part of some ingenious viral marketing campaign. Or two, which to me is more likely, that it is intimately related to this movie.
The area’s dark history originates in the 18th Century when a man named Mitchell Clay (sound familiar?) moved out to the location to start a farm and raise a family, only to have 2 of his children kidnapped and one of them unalived by a Native American tribe. Clay rounded up some other settlers and they retaliated and the place has been cursed ever since.
Much later, the farm is sold and becomes an amusement park. More tragedy ensues and a total of 6 people are killed and in 1966 the park is abandoned (there goes 666 again). Twenty years after that yet another business man buys the park and finds upon digging that the site is actually an ancient Native American burial ground that existed long before Clay and the settlers moved there! 😮😮.
Could it be then that the area is cursed by vengeful, angry spirits reaching out beyond the grave to reclaim what is rightfully theirs? Are they reclaiming lost territory by force? This activity from primordial forces at the Park is possibly mirrored by Clay’s situation in the modern day (the two stories are strangely similar) where his world is experiencing upheaval and it is now being dominated by forces of the id i.e. primal, instinctual thinking by his wife and daughter.
The changes in the psyche and the outer world could then possibly be ancient forces reasserting their dominance while everything is falling apart. The world/psyche was once the domain of these ancient spirits of the id, which they lost with the advent of modern civilization and the rise of the ego/superego. Now, in this time of chaos, the process is being reversed. This is my theory anyways 🤷🏽♂️🤷🏽♂️🤷🏽♂️.
On to PART 2!
