Metacritic reviews

Leave the World Behind enters the stage as one of the year’s best and no doubt will spark massive amounts of conversation. It’s cast helps take viewers on a journey that, while they’ll feel the length, they’ll be so compelled by what’s happening it won’t even matter. Just don’t expect to sleep easy after seeing it.

A satisfyingly suspenseful apocalyptic thriller with almost enough visual effects to give "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Deep Impact" a run for their money.

Leave the World Behind is a bold and tricky endeavor that pays off in just about perfect fashion. You might never think of “Friends” in the same way again.

With high points that are sharp and low points that are nonsensical, Leave the World Behind never ceases to be entertaining.

Leave The World Behind draws from familiar elements, but this adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel stands apart thanks to its excellent performances and slow, superb escalation of tension.

The themes of Leave the World Behind—and the place where everything ends up, which is funny and charming but a little unfinished—aren’t as tautly composed as the body encasing them. But considering ideas of “us against them” in times of crisis, and who exactly is “us,” and who is “them,” are worth considering in our current time.

Per Howard Hawks’ too-easy rubric, “A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes,” this one’s a keeper. The best scene may be the last.

Esmail, who earned his chops as the showrunner of Mr. Robot, excels at drawing out his characters’ paranoia.

As a nightmarish suspense drama about everyday life disintegrating, Esmail’s movie is sometimes effective, even while it echoes earlier films like The Road and David Koepp’s underrated 1996 thriller, The Trigger Effect.

Because “Leave the World Behind” is weak and unconvincing when it comes to character interaction, the film drags in the moment-by-moment, despite its stellar cast.