Leave the World Behind ends with a fitting lyric. As Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) presses play on the final episode of Friends, the credits roll and the famous theme song kicks in: “So no one told you life was gonna be this way…” It’s tough to argue. Over the course of the new film from Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail, our main characters are stranded in an unfamiliar landscape. First, the internet goes out and massive cargo ships drift aimlessly toward land; then planes start falling from the sky, a mysterious noise pierces the air, and self-driving Teslas crash into one another. What’s going on? 

If all of this seems a little eerily familiar, you’re not alone: Writer and director Esmail drew from recent experience as he worked on the film. “I read the book [by Rumaan Alam] in the very, very early days of the pandemic,” he tells Tudum. “And I just remember that feeling of uncertainty was terrifying in a way that felt scarier than the monsters that you would see on TV or horror films that you would watch.” 

That uncertainty is a crucial part of Leave the World Behind’s creepy fabric. We won’t dispel it; there are only so many easy answers to the questions the film poses. “You want to leave enough breadcrumbs to [leave] the audience wanting more, but not give too much away where they can be ahead of you,” Esmail says. We can show you where those breadcrumbs are — but you’ll have to find out where they lead. 

Can I rent the house from Leave the World Behind?

The Long Island rental home that Amanda Sandford (Julia Roberts) books for her family is indeed a real place. “We looked at a ton of houses all over Long Island,” Esmail says. “I got to give credit to my location manager, Mara Alcaly, who finally found this insanely gorgeous, beautiful house — really beautifully designed — and it had such a personality in terms of how it was laid out.” 

JoJo Whilden

The house is a crucial setting in Leave the World Behind, with much of the film’s suspense coming from the way the camera hovers above and travels from room to room along with the characters. “It gave us license to be able to move the camera in interesting angles, where I don’t think we could have gotten away with that in other homes,” Esmail says. The location was the perfect fusion of grand, gorgeous, and just a little bit intimidating. “The minute we landed at that house, we sort of all looked at each other and knew this was the right cast member to cast for this movie,” Esmail says.

What is the meaning of “Leave the World Behind”?

The film’s title is drawn from the rental listing that draws Amanda (Roberts) to the home the family is staying in. It’s an invitation to escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life — and a warning that everyday life as they know it is about to end quite abruptly.

Why are the deer acting so strangely in Leave the World Behind?

After the internet goes down, the Sandford family finds themselves stranded in the rental house home — only for the home’s owners (Mahershala Ali and Myha’la) to return, sparking tension. And strange things keep happening: Soon the house is surrounded by stoic, unmoving deer. It’s an oddly threatening gesture from the typically harmless animals, as Clay Sandford (Ethan Hawke) points out. 

“Deer are peaceful creatures,” Esmail says. “To turn that sweet image into now this sort of ominous, menacing, almost warning — I thought was really interesting. 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.” Elsewhere in the film, flamingos land on Long Island — another innocuous-appearing animal that comes across as odd and off-kilter in a world turned upside-down.

Of course, on set there were no deer to be found. “They’re all digital,” Esmail says. “It’s a testament to Chris Harvey, my VFX supervisor; Dione [Wood], my VFX producer; and Alec [Hart], who’s on the VFX team. They knew that we wanted to make the deer feel as real as possible, and they were on set. We had mock-ups there so that the actors had something to play off of, and we made sure that the lighting on the fur [was] as accurate as possible.”

What is “the noise”?

In the latter half of the film, the chaos ramps up, including a grating, screeching noise that echoes through Long Island. “When I read that in the book, I immediately got excited and spoke to my sound designer who I’ve worked with since the first season of Mr. Robot, Kevin Buchholz,” Esmail says. “Before we shot a frame of the film, we were trying to dial in this sound. We took elements of Havana Syndrome, which is a mysterious sound that they still have not gotten to the bottom of that has been causing people to have ailments.”

Having the sound prepared before the film started production allowed Esmail to surprise his actors with it. “I didn’t even tell them I was going to play it while we were shooting the scene,” he says. “I believe Julia was the first one to have heard it, so when we did her close-up and that moment came, we blasted the sound and that was her genuine reaction.”

In the film, the noise seems to lead to some horrifying symptoms (see below), but in real life Esmail was the only victim. “My sound engineers, rightfully so, always put earplugs in every time that section came up [in the editing room]. I stupidly did not because I said, ‘Well, I want to hear what the audience is going to hear,’ ” Esmail recalls. “And I ended up actually losing a little bit of hearing in my right ear.” With this in mind, Esmail lowered the sound a bit in the film’s final mix. You’re welcome. 

Why do Archie’s teeth fall out?

After hearing the noise — or maybe after sustaining a tick bite in the woods outside the home — Clay and Amanda’s son Archie (Charlie Evans) wakes up with a mouth full of rotting gums and slowly pulls his front teeth out. It’s a horrifying image for anyone with a fear of the dentist, and the effect was practical. “We had a great special effects team that built an appliance for Charlie,” Esmail says. “I always try to lean in on practical effects like that because that’s when you get genuine reactions from the actors, including Charlie himself, who was pulling it and who had this appliance in his mouth. He was as horrified as everyone else.”

JoJo Whilden

In the scene, Roberts’ Amanda stands several feet away from her son as he pulls his teeth out. That wasn’t a screenplay direction — Roberts was so disgusted by the effect that she didn’t approach her on-screen child to console him. “That’s sometimes the difference between practical effects and CGI is [that] when you get your cast members to really react to something real, it makes it that much more palpable,” Esmail says.

Did you spot the Mr. Robot easter egg hidden in the house?

One photograph in the home’s foyer serves as a subtle reference to Esmail’s hit TV series. It shows a swing carousel at Coney Island, near where the titular Mr. Robot’s fsociety gathered. But there’s also a deeper meaning — the photographer behind the image, Ming Smith, was the first African-American woman to have her work collected by the Museum of Modern Art. In fact, all of the art in G.H.’s home was created by artists of color, nodding to the owners' identities in subtle fashion even before they arrive at the front door.

As the film progresses, sharp-eyed audience members may spot a few changes to the scenery. The painting in the living room, for example, grows glitchier as things around it get more tense. “We didn’t want something that was going to be obvious,” curator Racquel Chevremont told Netflix. “We needed something that could evoke an emotional response without people really understanding why the scene seems a little different.” Another changing piece of production design lies in the bedroom, where the ocean wallpaper behind the bed rises gradually throughout the film — until Amanda and Clay appear to be underwater.

Why is Friends in Leave the World Behind?

The film’s Friends subplot originated on the page, but Esmail makes it into much more of a through line, with Rose’s marathon interrupted by the internet apocalypse. In Leave the World Behind’s final moments, she finds her way to a neighbor’s doomsday bunker — even as bombs fall across the water on Manhattan. An emergency alert system spells out some information about current events: The White House and major cities are under attack by rogue armed forces. 

But Rose only has eyes for one thing. In these confusing and chaotic times, she finds a saving grace: a dedicated physical media bookshelf, including a full Friends collection. Now, she can finally watch “The Last One.” 

“To me, it represented pure escapism,” Esmail says. “In moments of crisis when we’ve lost sight of our common humanity, when we feel isolated, we do want to escape to comfort. And for Rose, I thought her journey wouldn’t be complete until she watched the final episode of her favorite show.” To paraphrase the theme song: It’ll be there for her… when the bombs start to fall.

It’s not necessarily a hopeful conclusion, but there are a few glimpses of light in the darkness. “There’s a painting that’s hung up on the end of the hallway before Rose goes down into the basement that says ‘Hope begins in the dark,’ ” Esmail says. “I think as much as this film is a cautionary tale and it’s meant to be a warning, it’s not meant to give us an answer as to what to do next — but it is meant to say, ‘As dark as it could get, as bleak as it can get, we can always strive to find some hope.’ ” And maybe a DVD box set.

Leave the World Behind is now streaming on Netflix.