Leave the World Behind ending explained: Is it different from the book?

Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Charlie Evans and Farrah Mackenzie star as a family on an idyllic weekend getaway, whose trip soon erupts into chaos when two strangers come knocking and claim to be the owners of their Airbnb.

When GH (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha'la) ask to be let in, citing a blackout in New York, the other family are initially sceptical. But when their phones, television and other technology begins to break down, it soon becomes apparent that disaster is indeed on the horizon.

If you've been left puzzled by the Netflix film's ambiguous ending, read on to have the Leave the World Behind ending explained. Warning: spoilers ahead!

Leave the World Behind ending explained

Throughout the film, a number of increasingly inexplicable events occur – from bizarre and terrifying noises to strange behaviours from animals – plunging the characters and the world around them ever deeper into chaos.

Things come to a head when Archie develops a mysterious illness which causes his teeth to suddenly fall out one morning and Rosie goes missing, prompting the other characters to leave the house and look for answers.

Clay and GH pay a visit to the latter's survivalist neighbour Danny (Kevin Bacon) but he explains that he is not willing to help them and says he won't trust anyone, although he does appear to suggest that another neighbouring house contains a doomsday bunker.

After a tense confrontation – in which both GH and Danny point their guns at each other – Danny is eventually persuaded to part with some medicine for Archie in exchange for vast sums of cash, and also reveals that he reckons "the Koreans" or possibly "the Chinese" are behind the situation.

Clay then shows him a leaflet he had seen dropped from a drone earlier in the film that reads "Death to America", which had led him to believe that Iran was responsible for the cyber attack.

But Danny counters that before the communications blackout, he had heard from a friend who informed him of a similar incident, except with the words printed in either Korean or Mandarin – which leads him to believe America's various enemies have "teamed up".

Back in the car, GH reveals that his worst assumptions have all but been confirmed. For his job, he had spent a lot of time studying the cost-benefit analysis of various military campaigns, and the one that had most terrified his client had been a simple three-step manoeuvre "that could topple a country's government from within".

He explains that the first step was to wipe out communications and transport systems and the second was to sow chaos by terrorising them with misinformation and covert attacks.

If done successfully, he explains, the third step would happen on its own – the population would turn on their government and each other, leading to a coup d'état and civil war.

"The programme was considered the most cost-effective way to destabilise a country," he says. "Whoever started this wanted us to finish it."

After this explanation, we cut to Amanda and Ruth who are in the woods looking for Rose and see a glimpse of the city in the distance, where they can see several explosions and hear gunfire, indicating that the plan as GH had just described it has now come to fruition.

The film ends with Rose stumbling upon the house that Danny had referred to earlier, where she soon finds the aforementioned bunker.

There are plenty of supplies there, but instead of leaving to find her family with some of these supplies, she finds a Friends boxset in a huge DVD collection and settles down to finally watch the final episode of the sitcom – which she has been desperate to watch ever since the blackout started.

The film ends with the upbeat Friends theme tune – I'll Be There for You by The Rembrandts – playing, but this is clearly ironic: the country has begun to turn on itself and the future is looking very bleak for all of the film's characters and the rest of humanity.

What happened to Archie in Leave the World Behind?

Talking about Archie's mysterious illness, Leave the World Behind director Sam Esmail told Vulture that "it's a nightmare".

He said: "I want to be careful how I answer this. I think it’s a nightmare. I think the movie’s a nightmare, and I think that, in nightmares, things happen that are inexplicable.

Is Leave the World Behind's ending different from the book?

While the film more or less corresponds to events as they happen in the source novel, a couple of changes have been made along the way, most notably a complete rewrite of Ruth, who was GH's wife in the book, rather than his daughter.

Meanwhile, there is also a little change to the ending. In the book, Rose gathers supplies from the house that she stumbles across and heads out again, with the reader left to believe she is hoping to find her family again, meaning the Friends ending is an addition for the movie.

What was the meaning of Leave the World Behind?

Author Rumaan Alam told the Hollywood Reporter that despite the change from the book, he reckons the two works are still essentially saying the same thing.

"When I watch the movie, I see a work that is aiming to leave its audience the same way that my book left its readers, but the conventions of the form are just different," he said.

"The two feel really intertwined to me, and the adaptation feels very faithful to what I was trying to accomplish."

Alam echoed these thoughts in a new interview with Variety, in which he reflected on the meaning of Esmail's ending and called it "so satisfying”.

“To end with the particular jolt of humor that [Esmail] does is so satisfying and so rewarding,” he said. “It’s sort of self-reflective because he’s a filmmaker. He’s also worked in television, and he’s sort of asserting something about the power of that medium, and its hold over this one character.

“I say it’s funny, but I don’t think it’s a joke. I don’t think it’s a joke on Rose. I don’t think it’s a joke on the audience. I don’t think it’s a joke on Friends. It’s a reminder that art is kind of a salve.

"The theatrical experience of watching this movie is so powerful because I’ve had the chance to see audiences respond to the ending three times now, and nobody really knows what to make of it. They’re like, is this funny? Is this scary? Is it really over? And I love that so much.”

What was the point of the deer in Leave the World Behind?

Deer appear throughout the film at numerous points, and are often seen through the eyes of Rose.

Talking about the significance of the animals in the movie, Esmail told Tudum: "Deer are peaceful creatures. To turn that sweet image into now this sort of ominous, menacing, almost warning — I thought was really interesting."

He continued: "That's the trick about this movie. We always tried to take the things that we never really considered a threat and then turn it around on them."

What has Rumaan Alam said about the ending?

"The key thing to look at... is that the book ends with a question mark," author Rumaan Alam told Variety.

In an interview with the publication about the ending, Alam was asked about the deviations from the book, in particular the Friends theme tune ending.

He explained: "To end with the particular jolt of humour that [Sam Esmail] does is so satisfying and so rewarding. It's sort of self-reflective because he's a filmmaker.

"He's also worked in television, and he's sort of asserting something about the power of that medium, and its hold over this one character. I say it's funny, but I don't think it's a joke. I don't think it's a joke on Rose. I don't think it's a joke on the audience. I don't think it's a joke on Friends."

Alam continued that the ending is "a reminder that art is kind of a salve".

"The theatrical experience of watching this movie is so powerful because I've had the chance to see audiences respond to the ending three times now, and nobody really knows what to make of it. They're like, is this funny? Is this scary? Is it really over? And I love that so much."

Leave the World Behind is now streaming on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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