What is the meaning of the deer?
Netflix's newest thriller movie Leave The World Behind was released over the weekend and tells the unsettling tale of two families who end up experiencing an apocalypse together. And throughout the movie there's one prominent symbol that keeps reoccurring, the deer, but what exactly do they mean?
In Leave The World Behind, which is based on Rumaan Alam's novel of the same name, Amanda (Julia Roberts) and Clay (Ethan Hawke), take their two children Archie (Charlie Evans) and Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) on a spontaneous holiday to Long Island. Only, while they're there, a number of mysterious events occur.
An oil tanker ends up on the beach, the wifi and TV mysteriously stop working, and a father (Mahershala Ali) and daughter (Myha'la), G.H. and Ruth, turn up on their door in the middle of the night claiming they own the house and there's a blackout in New York. What follows is a series of rapidly unfolding events which show the world descend into an apocalypse.
Throughout the film deer are seen at numerous points, often by Rose who watches the deer in the garden of the house. At the beginning of the movie when they first arrive at the house, Amanda points out a sweet doe and her fawn playing in the garden. Later, in one scene Rose heads out to the garden where she sees a large group of deer gather in the garden watching her. And at the end of the movie Amanda and Ruth are surrounded by deer in the woods behind the house.
In the movie, the deer are sort of explained in a blink and you'll miss it moment. While Clay is driving in his car we hear on the radio an environmental disaster is affecting animal migration patterns which is the explanation given for why the deer, and later the flamingos, move so rapidly into human environments.
And now Sam Esmail, director of Leave The World Behind, has given more of an explanation into the symbolism of the deer and why he picked them as an animal to feature in the movie in an interview with Netflix's Tudum.
"Deer are peaceful creatures. To turn that sweet image into now this sort of ominous, menacing, almost warning — I thought was really interesting," he said. "That's the trick about this movie. We always tried to take the things that we never really considered a threat and then turn it around on them."
In Rumaan Alam's novel, which the movie is based on, the characters find out the next generation of deer will be born white, and their movements and migrations are intended to perhaps symbolise the way in which the world is so rapidly changing around humanity in ways in which we cannot control or change.
Talk about unsettling.
Leave The World Behind is available on Netflix now
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Lydia VennSenior Entertainment and Lifestyle Writer
Lydia Venn is Cosmopolitan UK’s Senior Entertainment and Lifestyle Writer. She covers everything from , to the latest celebrity news. She also writes across our work/life section regularly creating , covering exciting new releases and sharing the latest must-haves. In her role she’s interviewed everyone from Margot Robbie to Niall Horan, and her work has appeared on an episode of . After completing a degree in English at the University of Exeter, Lydia moved into journalism, writing for the , before working as Features Editor at , where she spoke on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and Talk Radio. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of Gilmore Girls and 00s teen movies, and in her free time can be found with a margarita in hand watching the Real Housewives on repeat. Find her on .
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