Leave the World Behind

In New York, the Sandford family decides to go  on vacation, so they rent a house on Long Island   next to a forest. The house is beautiful, but  the alcohol cabinet is locked. While the family   settles down, the mother Amanda drives to town  to buy groceries, and she can’t help noticing   Danny loading his truck with a great amount of  supplies. Later the family goes to the beach,   and the daughter Rose notices a huge oil tanker  ship sailing in the distance. At first they think   nothing of it, but soon they realize the ship is  approaching the beach. People start to panic and   run away as the ship crashes against the sand,  but thankfully nobody gets hurt and the beach   is closed for the day. When the family returns  home, they realize the wi-fi is not working,   and there is no service on their phones or  television. Amanda and her husband Clay are   also surprised to see some deer in the backyard,  which they see as a good omen. In the evening,   Amanda hears a noise outside and suddenly someone  knocks on their door. Clay gets ready to fight a   potential intruder, but two people shock them  by knowing their names. It turns out this is   businessman George and his daughter Ruth, who are  the actual owners of the house. It was George whom   Amanda talked to through e-mail to arrange the  rent. He apologizes for turning up unannounced but   all phones are out; they went to the symphony  in town and on their way back to the city,   there was a total power blackout. Since they  live on the 14th floor and George has a bad knee,   they thought they could stay in this house for  tonight. Amanda hates the idea and doesn't trust   them, so George tries to offer her a fifty percent  refund and promises he and Ruth can sleep in the   guest room in the basement. To prove his identity,  he reveals he has the keys to the cabinet and   opens it to take out an envelope, not letting  the others see there is also a gun in there.   The envelope has one thousand dollars that he  offers as compensation, but Amanda is still wary,   thinking he could have the keys because he is  the housekeeper. Clay has to convince Amanda to   give the duo a chance. George shares the alcohol  from the cabinet and tells them the story of this   house, explaining Danny was his contractor. He  also explains his wife is away traveling for his   job. Amanda interrupts him to demand an ID, but  George left his wallet in his other coat, which   he forgot at the theatre because of the commotion.  This puts Amanda on the edge because George had   said he didn’t know about the blackout until  later. Suddenly they hear an alarm ringing: Ruth   has turned on the television and they discover  that a national emergency has been issued. Now   Amanda has no choice but to let the duo stay in  the house. When George and Ruth go to the basement   room, it is revealed George knows something  because a client warned him. The next morning,   Amanda wakes up to see four emergency messages  on her phone: two talk about the blackout,   one mentions hackers possibly being behind it,  and the last one is just random symbols. Worried,   she wakes Clay up to show him the messages,  but they disappear before he can see them.   Clay decides to drive to town to get a newspaper  for more information, however since the GPS is not   working either, he soon gets lost. He stops the  car and gets out to check if he can catch a signal   on his phone, so he doesn’t hear the car radio  activating for just a few seconds. The reporter   informs that the cyber attack has caused a serious  environmental disaster in the South, which has   impacted animal migration patterns. With no luck  with the phone, Clay decides to keep on driving,   and moments later he finds a woman waving her arms  by the road. It seems she needs help so Clay stops   the car, but the woman can only speak Spanish  and he doesn’t understand her. Feeling disturbed   by her pleas, Clay decides to ignore her and keep  going. Suddenly he sees a drone flying nearby with   red smoke on its tail so he speeds up, but when  the drone comes closer, Clay realizes the smoke   is actually red leaflets. Meanwhile George also  drives out to visit the neighbors, keeping his   gun at hand. He keeps checking his phone because  he hasn’t heard from his wife since yesterday,   and she was supposed to fly back today. Sadly  not a single message has been delivered. The   neighbors’ house seems to be empty, and strangely  there are tons of random things spread in the   garden. The door was left open, so he goes inside  and finds a complete mess. George tries using the   neighbors’ satellite phone, but it is not working  either, which means all American satellites are   down. When he is about to leave, he notices  there are more things spread near the beach,   so he follows the trail and finds an expensive  watch in the sand. When he tries to pick it up, he   is shocked to find a whole arm and falls, only to  discover the body of a pilot. As he looks around,   he realizes a plane has crashed on the beach. At  that moment he hears another plane coming closer,   so he runs away and hides in the house right  before this plane crashes too. At the house, Rose   is very frustrated because she wants to watch the  final episode of “Friends” but none of the devices   are working. She runs outside and is shocked to  find a huge amount of deer in the backyard. She   convinces her brother Archie to go to the forest,  where they find an old shed. They go inside and   Archie tells Rose that someone must live there and  can watch her sleep through the window. Rose gets   startled and accidentally hits her head as she  realizes that Archie is just messing with her. On   their way back to the house, Archie is bitten by  a bug and Rose sees another deer, she also notices   all the birds flying away. When George comes back,  he admits to Amanda that he had guessed something   was coming because he saw the market behaving  weirdly. As he explains what he saw on the beach,   their conversation is interrupted when they start  hearing explosions in the distance, followed by a   loud screeching noise that hurts their ears and  cracks the windows. Amanda immediately rushes   into the woods to find her children, but the noise  becomes so unbearable that she drops to her knees   in pain. Luckily the noise ends soon and everyone  goes back into the house. Amanda remembers he saw   Danny buying too much stuff, and thinks he also  knew something would happen. At that moment Clay   comes back and shows them a leaflet, which turns  out to be written in Persian. Archie recognizes   it from war video games and explains it says  “Death to America”. Terrified, Amanda and Clay   decide to go to a relative’s house in New Jersey,  ignoring George’s warnings. As they drive away,   they keep hearing sirens, and eventually they find  the road blocked by a bunch of white cars. Amanda   goes ahead to investigate and notices there  are no people around. In fact, all these cars   are the same self-driving model and brand new.  Suddenly more automatic cars appear behind them,   so Amanda rushes back to her family and moves  her vehicle just in time before the speeding   cars crash into the ones blocking the road. The  family goes away as they dodge more incoming cars,   and in the distance it can be seen that the mess  goes all the way into the city. The Sandfords   have no choice but to go back to the house, and  George allows them to stay. As it starts to rain,   Archie stays in his room to get naughty  while looking at pictures he took of Ruth,   but he starts feeling sick and decides to sleep  instead. Ruth invites Clay to smoke with her,   and Clay admits feeling bad for leaving the poor  woman on the road. Suddenly they hear a splashing   noise and discover there are flamingos in the  pool Inside, Amanda and George share a drink,   and George makes a confession. He came to this  house because a powerful client who works for   the Pentagon told him that an evil cabal runs the  world. That client asked George to move around his   money out of the blue and said that he was going  away for a while, which made George realize that   something was about to happen. Tired of all this  depressing talk, George takes Amanda to the room   with his music collection and they dance for  a while. They get too close and share a hug,   so Amanda points out they are drunk and have  spouses. George agrees not to do anything, but he   also fears that his wife is probably dead. At that  moment, the screeching sound begins ringing again,   breaking all the lights and scaring the flamingos  away. Now they have to use candles for light, and   each family decides to share a bed for comfort. The next morning, they realize Rose is missing and   she may’ve taken one of the bikes. Suddenly Archie  wakes up with a fever and starts puking blood.   When he checks his mouth, he’s shocked to discover  all his teeth are falling. Archie thinks it has to   do with the bug bite, so George volunteers to take  Clay and a puking Archie to see Danny and ask for   medicine while Amanda and Ruth go into the woods  to look for Rose. After lots of searching to no   avail, Ruth and Amanda take a break at the shed,  only to start arguing. Neither of them likes the   other very much and an argument ensues, but by  sharing their worries, at least they manage to   understand each other a little better. At that  moment they hear a strange noise indicating   something moving outside. Amanda comes out and  sees bike tracks, but when she is about to follow   them, she hears a noise again and discovers Ruth  surrounded by a herd of deer. With no hesitation,   Amanda rushes to Ruth’s side and starts yelling  at the deer, prompting Ruth to do the same. The   trick works and the deer run away, so Amanda and  Ruth hug each other for comfort. Meanwhile the men   arrive at Danny’s place, but to their shock, Danny  makes them step back and comes out with a weapon   in hand. He explains the same noise happened  in Cuba a few years ago and caused radiation,   so that’s probably what made Archie sick. He  also knows that the Russians recalled their   people from Washington, so he assumes they are  at war. However Danny doesn’t care if George   is an old friend and Clay is willing to pay, his  priority is to help his own family so he refuses   to help them. If they want help, he thinks they  should go to the neighbors, who are supposed to   have a bunker. George refuses to leave without the  medicine, so he takes out his gun and an argument   ensues as they aim at each other. Clay moves to  get between them and admits he’s a useless man,   but he begs for the medicine as he gives a speech  about him and Danny having one thing in common:   they just want to protect their families.  Danny finally agrees and gives them the   medicine in exchange for money. While Archie has  the medicine, Danny shares some more information:   this was done by the Koreans. Clay responds by  showing him the leaflet to prove is the Iranians,   but Danny has more intel: before the phones  went out, a friend of his in San Diego told   him a drone dropped leaflets there too, but those  were in some East Asian language like Korean or   Chinese. The friend is a veteran of Iraq, so he  would’ve recognized it if it had been Persian.   Danny’s theory is that since the U.S. has lots  of enemies, they are teaming up to destroy the   country. The guys return to the car and George  admits that Danny’s information confirms a rumor   he heard before: this is a three-stage maneuver  used to destroy a country’s government from the   inside. First they isolate citizens by disabling  all their communication and transportation.   This makes people scared, causing stage two:  synchronized chaos. As it happened with Danny,   people will start turning on each other to  survive and won't trust any information outlets,   which would be fed by hackers and things like the  leaflets. Then stage three will happen on its own:   citizens will end up planning a coup or a  civil war, which collapses the country. Clay   and George agree to stick together and take their  families to the neighbors' bunker. In the woods,   Amanda and Ruth keep searching for Rose, only to  freeze when they see the skyline of Manhattan on   fire as explosions and gunfire are heard all  over the city. Meanwhile it is revealed that   Rose has been in the neighbors' house all along.  She broke the front door to get in and she is now   enjoying lots of food, but she stops when she  hears her mother calling out her name. Rose is   about to leave but then notices a light coming  from the basement, so she follows it and finds   the emergency bunker stocked with everything that  a person could possibly need, including a gym and   a greenhouse. There’s also an emergency alert  system, which suggests seeking shelter because   the White House and major U.S. cities are under  attack, causing radiation levels to rise near   many population centers. Rose discovers there is  a huge collection of DVDs that includes Friends,   so she grabs the disc and finally gets to  watch the last episode of her favorite show.