The movie “Leave the World Behind” has been the talk of the town lately and here is an explanation of Leave the World Behind’s ending.
This is a psychological drama movie that tells the story of a family that experiences strange events during their vacation. The movie airs on Netflix.
A surprising fact about what really happened at that time was revealed. However, it seems that many fans are still confused about the ending of the movie.
Content Navigation
Leave the World Behind Movie Ending Explanation
4. The Story of the End of the World
Leave the World Behind centers on Amanda Sanford and her family who choose to vacation on an island and rent a house. At first, they all have a wonderful time, until strange things start to happen. From the internet shutting down, a tanker anchoring near the beach where they live, and so on.
At first, Amanda’s family did not suspect anything and took it all as a normal phenomenon and accident. What is quite unique is that the house they rented, turned out to be the property of someone named George. George and his son came to the house in the middle of the night and begged to stay there.
Amanda, of course, felt uncomfortable and refused their request even though George and his son insisted that the house belonged to George. After some negotiation, George finally got permission to stay in the house after he returned the rent they had paid.
However, the strange things that happened made Amanda feel that George was hiding something. From people suddenly disappearing from the city, strange flyers plastered everywhere, to the horrifying sound of explosions that made their ears tormented.
Finally, Amanda confirmed that her suspicions were correct, George actually knew what was going on. According to George’s story to Amanda’s husband, all the irregularities and events they experienced had actually been predicted beforehand.
3. Explanation of the Strangeness that Occurred
So, what factors made the attack possible? George then explains to Clay that the attack was part of a larger, planned scheme to carry out a coup against the American government.
In the movie, it is revealed that George worked in the financial sector and one of his clients was a high-ranking leader in the American military. George also said that the client had a special reserve fund to carry out a coup against the government.
George continued his explanation of the attempt to take control of America. In the long-term strategy to carry out the coup, there are three steps they must take. The first step was “isolation,” by completely shutting down the power grid and the internet. They gave the hackers access to disable the satellite system.
Having completed the initial stage, they move on to the next stage, which is “coordinated chaos”. In an effort to create major unrest among the public, the group seeking to bring down power spreads fear with “disinformation and false attacks.”
The voices they listen to, which are actually devices that send radiation through sound, as well as the strange leaflets in foreign languages they encounter, are methods to spread fear by confusing people about who is actually responsible for the situation.
The final and most crucial step is the decline of the existing power, which will take place naturally by an anxious society, through internal conflicts and divisions within the society leading to the collapse of the government.
So, the various anomalies that appear in the movie are actually the result of a coup d’état carried out secretly by the military.
2. Symbolism in the Movie
What makes this movie unique is the use of several symbolic elements in the story. Leave the World Behind is divided into five segments with the titles; The House, The Curve, The Noise, The Flood, The End. Interestingly, these titles represent the events that took place in the movie.
However, there is another interpretation of the five segments in the movie. The first two segments serve as an introduction to the story. Meanwhile, segments 3, 4, and 5 are when George, respectively, explains to Clay about what happened while they were in the car outside Danny’s house at the end of the story.
These segments are also believed to relate to the stages or process of bringing down a state, as described by George. One of the most surprising things that viewers may wonder about is the obsession of one of Amanda’s children, Rose, with Friends.
In the movie, you can see how much Rose wanted to know the end of the last episode of Friends. She only watched part of it because of a bad internet connection. She even dared to look for the bunker where the series’ DVDs were stored.
Why is Rose so enamored with Friends?
In a symbolic context, this relates to the psychological state of the individual watching the series. Ruth, George’s daughter, argues that Friends is a series that evokes feelings of past memories even though they never experienced that era.
In addition, there is also a book that talks about how media becomes a tool to escape reality and also a reflection of everyday life. In Rose’s situation, her love for Friends inadvertently made her a hero. From the beginning, she had a relationship with an uninhabited house, which according to a neighbor named Danny, had a bunker.
Although Rose did not know this, she felt that the herd of deer she saw seemed to be guiding her to visit the house. She felt that the strange behavior of the animals was a sign to her, so she dared to escape and enter the house.
He found a large stock of food and medicine in the empty bunker of the house, and in terms of symbolism, he found the Friends series footage he was looking for.
This symbolizes that with Rose’s discovery of the bunker, everything will end happily, similar to Rose finally being able to watch the Friends series she’s been longing for.
1. Difference with Novel Version
The movie Leave The World Behind is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam which was published in 2020.
There are several changes made in the movie when compared to the original story in the novel. For example, the characters of GH or George and Ruth in the movie are described as a father and son duo. However, in the original novel, they are described as an elderly married couple.
In terms of plot, Leave the World Behind is quite faithful to the novel version, taking almost all the same story elements. Even so, there must have been some modifications and adjustments made in the novel before it was brought to the big screen.
For example, there is a plane crash scene on the beach. Some other moments taken directly from the book are the arrival of flamingos to the house and a power outage.
That’s the explanation for the ending of Leave the World Behind, which also features a unique element in its plot, namely a subplot about Rose who seems very angry and frustrated because she can’t see the final episode of the Friends series because there is no internet connection.
What is very different from the original book is that at the end of the story the novel version shows Rose carrying the equipment and then returning home.
