Leave the World Behind: The Symbolism of the Deer

The Leave the World Behind movie on Netflix has everyone talking. Written and directed by Sam Esmail, who adapted the 2020 novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam, this is the kind of movie that leaves much to discuss after the credits start to roll. From the punchy ending, to the painting Easter Eggs, to the filming locations, to the sick Tesla burn, Leave the World Behind will have your whole group chat lit up.

Why do the deer act like that in Leave the World Behind?

Before we get into the symbolism of it all, let’s talk about why the animals—and most especially deer—behave so oddly in Leave the World Behind. There’s been a cyberattack on the United States, and most, if not all, Wi-Fi, computer, and cellular technology has been rendered useless. The audience hears via a split-second radio report that the cyberattack has caused a “catastrophic environmental disaster in the south,” which is affecting animal migration patterns. That’s the only explanation we get, leaving it up to the viewer to imagine the details of this environmental disaster.

In the book by Rumaan Alam, the character Danny (played by Kevin Bacon in the movie) theorizes that the deer are undergoing a mass migration, as a “disaster response. A disaster indicator. A disaster indicator.” So that’s why the animals are acting weird—they know something’s up, and they are responding in kind. But what does it mean, what does it all mean?

What do the deer mean in Leave the World Behind?

It’s open to interpretation, but I believe the deer in Leave the World Behind symbolize the human population, stripped down to their animalistic survival instincts in the face of disaster. The scene in the movie where Julia Roberts and Myha’la face off with the deer in the woods is juxtaposed with the scene between Kevin Bacon and Mahershala Ali. Both scenes are depicting animals wrestling with their fight-or-flight response to fear. The girls manage to scare off the deer, that they perceive as a threat. Kevin Bacon is trying to do the exact same thing to Mahershala Ali, by threatening him with his gun. All of them are animals, just trying to keep themselves safe. Get it?

Near the end of the book, Alam writes a passage that makes this deer symbolism a little more clear:

The next generation of these deer would be born white as the unicorn in those Flemish tapestries that Rose and her family would never see. Not albinism, the one geneticist who worked it out would discover, but intergenerational trauma. Life was like that; life was about to change.

In other words, this huge disaster has a traumatic impact on this entire herd of deer, so much so that it alters their physical form. It’s a metaphor for the intergenerational trauma faced by groups of people who were targets of atrocities, like genocide or slavery. The book was published in October 2020, and likely written before the pandemic, but it also takes on a new meaning for the world slowly recovering from COVID-19.

Director Sam Esmail added in an interview with Tudum that he liked the juxtaposition of our perception of deer as non-threatening. “Deer are peaceful creatures,” Esmail said. “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 the things that we never really considered a threat and then turn it around on them.”

On a lighter note, you can smile a little picturing how that final deer scene in the movie was filmed. In an interview with Decider, star Myha’la explained, “I was screaming and crying at a poor crew member holding a gray, CGI plastic deer. Seriously shout out to all those crew members who just had to watch and not laugh at me and Julia being as big and as crazy as we could possibly be. There were no actual deer. There were a couple of fake ones—there were maybe three scattered around, so we had a direction to look at. But the rest was our lovely crew holding CGI props.”