Writer and director Sam Esmail often explores alienation and loneliness in an ever-increasing technological world. His show Mr. Robot did so through the Emmy-winning performance of star Rami Malek as an anti-social engineer and hacker. His new film Leave The World Behind adapts the 2020 Rumaan Alam novel of the same name, and stars Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali as strangers grappling with a cyberattack.
More: Sam Esmail: Mr. Robot (The Treatment, 2017)
For his Treat, Esmail reveals the inspiration behind Leave The World Behind’s polarizing ending. He considers the much-discussed 2007 series finale of the Emmy-winning HBO series The Sopranos a “gift” to audiences. Esmail wanted to end his film by sparking the same imagination, interactivity, and engagement for its audience.
More: Sam Esmail’s techno-dread goes way past Leave The World Behind (The Treatment, 2024)
This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity.
One of the things that sort of inspired [Leave The World Behind] and specifically the ending [is when] I watched the series finale of The Sopranos.
By the way, spoiler alert: If you haven't watched The Sopranos, don't [read] what I'm about to say. Go watch it. But [it’s] David Chase's decision to cut to black, in the middle of this sort of frenetic scene that was building and building and building, but you get no payoff. The payoff is on you to dictate what happens after that cut to black — [that] was so profoundly meaningful to me. Because the minute that happened, like everyone else, I made sure that my cable wasn't cut out. Like, did he actually do that?
Secondly, I remember walking my dog and getting on the phone with five of my friends to talk about this. And some of them hated it. Actually, most people hated it. Some people appreciated it. And then we just started getting into debates about what it meant. And “What do you think happened? Why?” And getting into theories.
It let us interact with our favorite story, with our favorite characters. And that was such a special gift that David Chase gave us.
For me, that is hands down the best series finale — period. Of all time. One of the best endings to [a] story of all time. It was this groundbreaking way of engagement and interactivity that was so elegantly done and so simple, and that was something that really inspired why I wanted to end the film the way I did.
