Yahoo Sports Leave the World Behind doesn't need to give you all the answers
Leave the World Behind might not give you all the answers, but that hasn't stopped the apocalyptic thriller becoming another pre-Christmas hit for Netflix like The Midnight Sky, Bird Box and Don't Look Up in recent years.
After only three days of release, Leave the World Behind topped the most-watched movies list for December 4-10, 2023 on the streaming service with 41.7 million views. That's a number that is only set to grow massively over its first full week.
As seems to be the norm these days, however, some viewers have decided that just one movie isn't enough. Likely due to the ambiguous and somewhat abrupt ending, there have been calls – or even an expectation – for a sequel, to resolve all lingering mysteries.
However, we're not dealing with a Fast X, an Across the Spider-Verse or a Rebel Moon here. Leave the World Behind is likely a one-and-done – or, rather, it absolutely should be.
Like the book before it, the open-ended climax was always the point of the story as it was never about the apocalypse, really, but about how humanity might respond to it at the micro level.
Related: Why Leave the World Behind's use of Friends is meaningful
While the movie makes some changes to the book's ending, it's faithful in the fact that it doesn't provide all the answers.
Rose might not be pressing play on the final episode of Friends in the book, but she's still alone in that house, separated from her family. Archie is still mysteriously ill after his teeth fall out, and the world is in a bad place, with no sign of an immediate resolution.
It's bleak, but if the movie had deviated completely by adding a coda that saw everybody living happily in that bunker, it wouldn't have felt as satisfying. Life isn't straightforward, there are no easy answers, and by not sugar-coating it, Leave the World Behind is respecting your intelligence as a viewer to ponder what's next.
As writer/director Sam Esmail told Digital Spy ahead of the movie's release, he knew ending on a question mark was a risk, but an essential one: "We shouldn't pull punches here because, like in life, we have to face ambiguities all the time.
"That was essential to the book and central to what I wanted to do in the film – there are no easy answers and solutions, and we have to face that and go on regardless."
What's more, Rumaan Alam – who wrote the original book and served as an executive producer on the movie – doesn't even know what happens next to the families.
"I don't know what's going to happen to Archie. The truth is that I don't know. This is something I've heard Sam say a lot, that he also doesn't know. But this is open enough that it becomes something that is possessed by its audience," he told Variety.
"I'm not withholding a definitive answer because I'm not in possession of that."
It's possible that in the years to come Alam will write a follow-up novel but, right now, we'll just have to imagine what a follow-up would be.
Don't get us wrong, we'd love to hang out for two hours again with Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke and Myha'la doing their thing. But as much as we'd want that, it's hard to imagine it being as emotionally satisfying.
A sequel would likely either have to throw more mysteries into the mix to keep you gripped in the same way as Leave the World Behind, or it would have to solve everything set up in the first movie – from the weird deer to the teeth and more – to leave everything wrapped up with a neat bow.
Doesn't that sound a bit boring though? The joy of an ambiguous ending is that it leaves plenty of scope to discuss and debate afterwards with everybody else who's watched it.
There is no right answer because there simply isn't any answer in the first place.
Of course, if Leave the World Behind continues to be a hit over the festive season, then we're not ruling out the possibility that Netflix will want a second helping.
It's just the nature of the movie industry where familiarity is, still too often, king. But if you gave us a choice right now, we'd rather press play on a rewatch of Leave the World Behind than on a sequel.
Leave the World Behind is available to watch now on Netflix.
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