A new apocalyptic psychological thriller just released on Netflix featuring a group of self-driving Teslas that go mad and try to kill Julia Roberts and her family.
The star-studded cast includes Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawkes, Mahershala Ali and Kevin Bacon being directed by Sam Esmail and is titled Leave the World Behind. The plot centres around a mysterious cyber attack that makes people, and apparently cars, go mad.
In one particular scene set in Long Island just as the attack is starting, Julia Roberts comes across a pile-up of empty Model 3 Teslas. The realisation gradually dawns on her as she inspects the dealer stickers on the windows that all the vehicles are new and off the dealer’s lot.
In a little bit of cinematography that sort of tickled me, the camera zooms in to warn us about the cars “self-driving safety features” right about the time that Ms Roberts realises that there is another demented self-driving white Tesla 3 speeding towards the car she and her family are in and along with the others behind it they plan to smash into anything in their way.
The camera zooms in to warnings about the cars’ “self-driving safety features” just in time for her to realize that yet another white Tesla speeding towards her family’s SUV is driving itself — and that it, and the ones behind it, plan to hit anything or anyone in their way.
The film is based on the novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam but the film has a crazy Tesla scene that will most definitely give some viewers the heebie-jeebies’ if they have read any of the previously published articles on the Tesla Autopilot full-self-driving (FSD) function which has offered up quite a few hair-raising moments and quite a few deaths over here in the real world.
After the film was released last weekend, news of the scary plot made its way over to X (formerly Twitter) which prompted a response from its owner Elon Musk, who of course also owns Tesla and who doesn’t seem to have watched the film to respond in defence of his Tesla:
“Teslas can charge from solar panels,” Elon Tweeted “even if the world goes fully Mad Max and there is no more gasoline!”
I think that Elon is being a tad over sensitive, the issue at hand is not that the cars are EV’s but that they are driving themselves with deadly intent. A small detail that not all of the X users missed with many joking about how the film seems to have ‘triggered’ the applications owner.
According to a report in Rolling Stone the film’s director did not ask permission to use the Tesla’s in those scenes.
In the interview, Esmail is quoted as saying; “Look I wrote the script, I asked my amazing props guy, Bobby, to bring a bunch of Tesla’s out on the street, we shot the scene. I edited it in post and showed it to Netflix, I crossed my fingers and to this day no one has said anything to me”.
Of course, now that Elon Musk is aware, that statement may have to be edited, unless that is unless the extremely busy Mr Musk has neither the time nor inclination to watch it.
Watch the trailer for Leave The World Behind here:
