half-assed job
I finally watched "Leave the World Behind" last night, and while everyone is focused on the obvious predictive programming portrayed about a cyber pandemic and sonic/energy weapons bringing us into systemic collapse, there is another point that I think some people missed in regards to the daughter Rose being addicted to entertainment and the fake reality being created through movies and TV shows, and how much it has captured the mind of the youth into derealization, escapism, and completely contorted perceptions of what's important, with these weird emotional attachments to celebrities and the characters they play as if they're real.
Within the first few minutes of the movie after the title scene, it shows her riding in the car watching Friends on her iPad before the internet goes out, and she asks her dad when they get back to city to take her to see the Coffee shop in Friends, and he responds to her "I don't think that's real honey. It's just a set". This is setting the tone for her for the remainder of the movie.
The next scene she is waking up her mom to complain about the internet still being out and how she has "incredible anxiety about how they're going to wrap up the show". Again depicting the youth as being consumed by entertainment and TV to the point of it making them mentally ill and anxious about fictional TV characters and how a show ends.
Later towards the end of the movie, she again wakes her brother to ask if she is never going to know how Ross and Rachael end up, and her brother asks why she cares so much about Friends. She says it's because they make her happy, and "If there is any hope in this f–ked up world, we'll at least find out how things turn out for them. I care about them".
The film ends with GH giving a speech about a 3 step plan he heard from his defense contractor client on how to topple a nation by making it so dysfunctional that it cannibalizes itself, before cutting to the end scene with Rose breaking into a wealthy home, inundating herself with toxic junk food and soda, roaming around the house until she enters the bunker, and then finding a TV and a wall of DVDs with her favorite show Friends. The final scene is her playing episode called "The Last One" and smiling mindlessly at the TV at the same time bombs are being dropped on cities nearby and sonic space based weapons deployed on the populace.
Considering this movie was written by the same person behind the show Mr Robot, Sam Esmail, which was full of the same depictions of the typical brainwashed consumerist Americans fixated on celebrity worship, mindless entertainment, and political theater with elites at the top pulling the strings and manufacturing world events and controlling narratives, I think this movie is trying to convey a similar message beyond just the predictive programming about collapse, which already started years ago with the youth, as far back as the 60s.
cont..