Genre Miscommunication: Why Leave the World Behind Deserves a Second Look.

Picture It

A New York family goes on a last-minute vacation. They rent a big, beautiful house with a pool in a secluded wooded area with their New York City skyline on the horizon.

The vacation is excellent, except for a few peculiar things, like the survivalist neighbor hoarding supplies and an oil tanker drifting ever closer to the shore. Then a man and his daughter arrive in need of a place to stay as a city-wide blackout ensues, hinting they might be the only people left as the end of the World approaches.

This is the gist of Leave the World Behind (2023, Netflix). It sounds like an amazing Apocalyptic Thriller/Mystery, right?

Wrong, and that’s probably why the audience gave it a 35% rating and stomped all over their tipped popcorn bucket to ensure everybody knew it. But I liked it. I mean, I really, really, really loved it. Why didn’t they?

What’s Wrong with It

Well, it wasn’t because of the cast. Leave the World Behind stars Julie Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, and Kevin Bacon as the leading heavy hitters, and the brilliant actors did not disappoint, even if the movie did. Was it the script? Filming? Lack of suspense? Nope.

The writing was poignant, economic, and chilling. The cinematography was gorgeous, if sometimes jolting, and the tension was palpable. So, why didn’t the movie work for people?

It’s because of the set expectation of two little words: thriller and mystery. It is a miscommunication issue.

For The Thrill of It

For it to be a Thriller/Mystery, the story needs to go something like this:

A family rents a vacation house, strange things start to happen, and a weirdo survivalist neighbor bullies them. A man and his daughter show up on false pretenses. The wife is suspicious, the husband not so much, but the two kids love the strangers immediately.

The wife starts investigating. The husband convinces her she’s paranoid. The wife discovers the true identities of the man and the daughter, and the two own up to it, except the reason they are there is a lie.

More weird stuff builds up, and the wife collects evidence even as her family gets more immersed with the strangers.

The wife figures out the final piece of the puzzle and confronts the man and his daughter, who then turn around and hold the rest of the family hostage. The man’s daughter dies. There is a relentless chase scene in the woods, and the wife triumphs.

The Apocalyptic twist would be the man and daughter have been murdering people and taking supplies (this is not a spoiler alert, by the way). The survivalist neighbor jumps in and helps the family because he knows deep down that it’s the right thing to do.

Ta! Da! Mystery/Thriller.

This is not what happens in Leave the World Behind. For most of the movie, the audience can’t figure out what is happening. We try putting together the pieces:

Why is the mom so unlikable? Why is her husband so passive? What does the man and his daughter really know? What are they hiding? Are they even hiding something? And what’s up with the birds, deer, and mass exodus to the vacation home area?

There are many questions that are not really ever answered, and the ending feels way too abrupt. However, it is also finished. Probably.

Really, What Is It

The actual genre of Leave the World Behind is Horror, but not to be confused with what most movie fans believe this expectation sets.

It’s not gory or bloody. There are no jump-starts or people running around with masks and machetes. Instead, a deep dive into each character ends with a completed arc for every character, even the survivalist (to a point).

We’ve all seen something like this type of movie before. Think Alfred Hitchcock (The Birds, North-by-Northwest, Psycho — yes, even Psycho wasn’t typical for Horror fans) or any of Jordan Peele’s movies (Get Out, Nope, Us) — all are as terrific as they are horrific, but also different.

To make matters even more confusing, Leave the World Behind is a sub-genre with a twist, a Slow-Burn Horror with the break-neck pacing of a Thriller barbed by Mystery.

Structuring It

What’s a Slow-Burn Horror (aka Elevated Horror), and what’s the difference between that and good old regular Horror? The purpose.

Both kinds of Horrors share tropes:

Dread, fear, no way out, impending doom, and inexplicability of events. Both use setting, atmosphere, and play with time (aka a time lock) to ratchet up the tension. However, Horror generally uses a set of story structure rules to make an audience more comfortable (as strange as that may seem).

For example, the audience knows that the characters running for their lives will eventually figure out how to outsmart the bad guy. And when the hero does, there is an emotional payoff at the end. Phew, that was close!

See? According to this structure, a more established comfortability equals a better experience. Ta! Da!

Even if the masked madman doesn’t die at the end, the audience knows it’s a tactic for future movies, but they are no longer in danger. See? Aww, it’s just so comfortable.

A Slow Burn’s task is often the very opposite. They aim to keep the audience uncomfortable, stress them out, make no tidy connections, obscure all reasoning, put a microscope over all things the audience takes for granted, and then do the same to the ending. Ta-Da?

Think of it this way: a regular horror’s goal is to titillate and terrorize the audience. However, Slow-Burners love to make them sweat and think.

Another difference is that a typical Horror story is purely plot with little character development. The Slow-Burn is a building kind of genre (characters, plot, atmosphere, etc.) but with chaos at its core.

For Slow-Burn Horrors, the structure goes like this (except they also have a habit of experimenting with ideas, like structure):

A character living a regular life is broadsided by something absurd. Absurdity is key! A series of strange things happen that the character can’t quite put their finger on, building up to a near-breaking point—the End.

For this type of story structure, the audience’s job isn’t to solve it — no matter how many clues — but rather to experience it. They see what the character sees, senses, understands, and very little else. They are supposed to mirror what the character experiences.

Metaphor It to Recognize It

Because I’m a metaphor-whore, let me put it this way:

Slow-burn Horror is the sudden realization that all the hair on your head is raised, but you have no idea the cause. It’s that tingle in your throat that you can’t scratch or swallow down and it’s growing, threatening to choke you.

It’s knowing something just out of your periphery is there, waiting, hovering. It’s the void between heartbeats. It’s that pause between when your brain finally connects that you are in danger and when you fight or take flight.

Often, Slow-Burn Horror is unsettling, unnerving, confusing, and hard to grasp. This could be very uncomfortable for people if their expectations are primed for something else. There is never a break in tension, and the audience gets no relief.

Optimal Prime It

Indy films (Independent films) have broken free from expectations by going by “Indy.” An audience knows this means certain things may differ from what they’re used to. And it works very well! People even see these kinds of films regularly. Festivals are dedicated to them!

Leave the World Behind has aspects of a Thriller and is inundated with loads of Mystery, but it’s not a Thriller/Mystery, and that’s okay. This doesn’t mean that anybody is at fault (It’s incredible how many audiences, writers, and producers do not know all the different aspects of Horror beyond the Slasher kind!)

So, how did the movie earn this genre?

The people labeling the movie used the most compelling parts of it and filtered it into those specific genres: Leave the World Behind (Thriller/Mystery and Drama) because they thought it was the best translation. They’d get the biggest bang for their buck that way.

And the audience members who didn’t like Leave the World Behind (beyond personal taste) aren’t at fault either because they have been primed for years with specific expectations connected to particular genres.

For many people, Leave the World Behind was like going to an art museum, anticipating canvases of still-life portraits, and seeing nothing but Picassos. Different, right? A little jarring, too. So, what to do?

Consider It

Another component that might have contributed to the audience's dislike of Leave the World Behind (both movie and novel) could be the landscape in which it debuted. The book by Rumaan Alam was released in 2020—remember the pandemic? In reality, we were terrified with no solution in sight. No matter how well-thought-out or written, a novel that parallels this fear will crash and burn unless there is hope with an exclamation mark!

As for the movie in 2023? In the United States, we are in an election year, and wars across Europe are in full bloom. It’s terrifying right now, with no comfort in sight. We want a sense of control. A sense of silver lining before us. We want a pan of warm chocolate brownies and the promise of more when we want it — not the cold, hard truth of reality.

When it comes to movies, maybe we need more diverse story ideas and thus gain more experience with sub-genres. Perhaps sub-genres need to add something to their labels, such as a sub-label sub-genre or something like Slow-Burn Horror (which we see, but only in print when story nerds like me search them out). Or what about copying the Indy route and calling them Bent-Horror to convey that things are different than expected?

I don’t know, but I loved Leave the World Behind, and perhaps, with a better idea of what this movie is, not what the expectations are, you will, too.

I’m curious to know which movies gave you pause at first and what changed your mind about liking them or not.

Tell me in the comments below!