By: Stephanie Benitez Caballero

*Warning: This article contains spoilers

The movie ‘Leave the World Behind’ came out in 2023 on Netflix. It’s directed by Sam Esmail and produced by former first lady Michelle Obama and former president Barack Obama.

In the movie we are introduced to the Stanford family, a family of four, with Amanda and Clay as the parents and Rose and Archie as the children. Amanda books an Airbnb for her family to get away from the city and their work for a weekend. While on the way to the Airbnb the family starts to lose internet connection on all their devices. Rose, the youngest, complains about this as she is currently enamored with a show called ‘Friends’.

When at the Airbnb the family puts away their stuff and decides to head to the beach, and while at the beach Rose notices that a boat is slowly heading towards their direction. She points it out to her parents but they do not mind it. Not until later, when the boat is nearly at the beach, do the parents realize that the boat isn’t going to turn, making them panic and run away from the boat. The family decides to go back to their Airbnb. Once back at the Airbnb the family notices that the signal to the internet is completely gone, including on their TVs.

Later that night, George and Ruth show up at the Airbnb; we learn later that these are the owners of the house. They ask the Stanford family if they can stay there as they do not feel safe going anywhere else that isn’t their home. The Stanford family is skeptical about them being the owners so they ask them to prove it, which they do by opening the alcohol cabinets. They end up staying the night against Amanda’s wishes.

The next morning something goes up on the TV, a map of the US with a caption “Cyber Attack Across The Country” this sends the families into a bit of a chaos. During the day a lot of strange things happen to the families, loud ringing noises that hurt them occur, deers begin to show up more often and act weirdly, and Archie gets a bite from a deer tick which leads to him getting Lyme disease.

The families are now on the second day of being isolated together in the house, the Stanford family gets impatient and decides to try to go back to the city but while on the way to the city they encounter that the roads are blocked off by a bunch of cars. They quickly realize that the cars are self driving Tesla cars and that they are purposely rushing into one another. The family drives back to where they were staying as they find no other way back to the city.

The next day, Archie wakes up and starts to bleed from his mouth, and he starts to pull his teeth out. This was caused by the tick he got bitten from. In a panic, Clay, the father, tries to go out into town again to find some medicine for his child.

While out, the roads are empty and he believes to be alone, until he bumps into a Hispanic lady that only speaks Spanish. In a hurry, she tries to explain to him that she needs to get back home and that there’s planes in the sky dropping red papers. This makes Clay paranoid and leaves her behind.

Slowly approaching in the background we see the plane the lady was talking about, dropping thousands of red papers. Clay goes back and shows the paper to the others. It’s in Arabic, making them believe that the Arabs are the ones attacking them.

Rose disappears, so Ruth and Amanda go out to search for her while Clay and George try to go out with Archie to find medicine to treat the Lyme disease. They get to one of the closest houses and the owner tells them to back away because he couldn’t help them. He threatens them at gunpoint but they beg him to help them as they know he has the things need to save Archie. He gives in and supplies them with the medication.

The neighbor gives them so much information on everything going on, saying that he believes that it isn’t the Arabs attacking them, that the outside world is trying to confuse them and mess with them so that people will attack each other in confusion. He also lets them know one of the nearby houses has an underground base with many supplies and safety for all of them.

We cut to a scene of a house, a window broken. We see Rose inside eating what looks like a feast of junk food. Rose goes down to the basement where she finds an underground bunker, the one mentioned by the neighbor. Alone, Rose finds a DVD of the show Friends’, forgetting her family she sits down and smiles as she gets to watch the last episode of ‘Friends’.

I really liked this movie. I feel as if the trailer doesn’t spoil much but also gives a bit of context on what the movie will be about. I thought I knew what was going to happen but every moment new information and things came up. I think it’s a very realistic thing that would happen if the US were to get attacked. Some things weren’t explained further, such as who really created the attack, but I think that really adds to the movie.

I also really enjoyed the ending. I personally think that the last clip was to represent how in bad situations, that happen in the world, humans will always naturally turn to entertain themselves to distract them or make them forget about the world around them. I would rate this movie a 10/10.

By: Abisola Dosunmu

‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’, is a prequel to the four-part ‘Hunger Games’ movie franchise that’s set “64 years before Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen ever drew breath”, which means there are several serious changes. The known antagonist, Coriolanus Snow, who was played by Donald Sutherland in the previous movie, is now an 18-year-old kid played by actor Tom Blyth. Actress Rachel Zegler replaces Jennifer Lawrence as the female protagonist and plays one of the vital main characters, Lucy Gray Baird. 

The movie was authored by Suzanne Collins and, like the ‘Hunger Games’, centers on a fight to the death/survival-of-the-fittest type reality show that only leaves one victor. For context, the games were invented as a punishment by the Capitol of Panem as payback to the 12 districts who dared to rebel against the Capitol. Every year on a specific day since that, a boy and a girl, relatively in their teens, are chosen from each district to fight to the death in a televised gladiator event.

Lucy as a character is already shown throughout the movie to be a different character to Katniss. She, like the title of the movie, is a songbird with a guitar and in a traveling band called the Covey. Strangely enough, the movie isn’t told from her point of view but from the younger Snow struggling to make it back to the top after losing everything. Lucy is his way back to that life, so he takes advantage of it and with that, the Hunger Games begin. Without giving away spoilers, I’m just going to say it gets pretty predictable from there. 

So, what did I think of the movie? Well, it’s been a long time since I watched and read the ‘Hunger Games’, so basing it off of that it’s a refreshing and new take. It was interesting seeing young Snow and his motivations and aspirations and how the Capitol was the same but different a few decades ago. The actors had a lot of chemistry and the only bad thing I would say about the movie was that there wasn’t a lot of screen time for a lot of characters to develop the way there was in the book, so some characters felt rushed and not properly fleshed out. All in all, I’d give this movie an 8/10. 

For more information, please visit:

• https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/review-hunger-games-ballad-songbirds-snakes-takes-risky/story?id=104914903&scrlybrkr=f20c5174
• https://thehungergames.fandom.com/wiki/Sejanus_Plinth#:~:text=Coriolanus%20Snow,-We%27re%20so&text=Snow%20sacrificed%20for%20and%20rescued,defending%20him%20to%20Dr.%20Gaul