What’s Up With the Deer in ‘Leave the World Behind’?
Sam Esmail’s new Netflix drama, Leave the World Behind, left us with many questions—to say the absolute least. Is George’s wife alive? Will Rosie reunite with her parents? Where did all those Teslas come from?! And what’s up with the deer?
For those catching up, Leave the World Behind follows two families caught in an apocalyptic disaster. Set in New York, the film stars Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke as Amanda and Clay, two Brooklynites who take their kids, Archie and Rose, on a weekend trip to Long Island. The family rents a beautiful vacation home, but their trip is interrupted when two strangers, George (Mahershala Ali) and Ruth (Myha’la Herrold) knock on the door and claim to own the property. They say there’s been a blackout in Manhattan—and soon after, their world is shattered.
That’s where the deer come in. Leave the World Behind is based on Rumaan Alam’s novel of the same name, which introduces deer early on in the story. They appear slowly—first in the woods surrounding the estate, then more frequently as the apocalypse unfolds. The film takes a similar approach, with Rose first spotting a deer by the pool. It seems innocent enough—until more deer approach and then suddenly disappear. Later on, while Amanda and Ruth are searching for Rose in the woods, Ruth is cornered by a giant flock of deer who are fixated on her every move.
The scene, which brings Ruth and Amanda together, is terrifying, given how realistic the deer appears to be. It’s just special effects, though. “It’s a testament to Chris Harvey, my VFX supervisor; Dione [Wood], my VFX producer; and Alec [Hart], who’s on the VFX team,” Esmail said. “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.” Creepy!
The deer’s symbolism is fairly simple, too. “Deer are peaceful creatures,” Esmail explained. “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 things that we never really considered a threat and then turn it around on them.”
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