“Leave the World Behind” is a movie set in the present time.

Everything is familiar, from the Teslas that drive themselves and crash to clog the freeway, preventing escape, to the GPS that suddenly fails and leaves a bewildered city-dweller trying to find “town” when there’s nothing but country as far as the eye can see.

These are things that we have seen, heard of, experienced.

Perhaps that’s what makes the movie so scary.

In the H.G. Wells classic “War of the Worlds,” ships from outer space attack the earth. No one had previously seen such vessels, yet otherwise intelligent people believed and panicked when a fictitious radio broadcast announced that extraterrestial beings were invading.

In “Leave the World Behind,” an oil tanker pulls up on a beach full of sunbathers and swimmers, military planes suddenly drop out of the sky, and a windstorm of pamphlets pronounces “Death to America.”

The Sandford family doesn’t want to leave the world behind permanently – they only want to get away and live in somebody else’s world for a weekend. Amanda Sandford (Julia Roberts) works in advertising, and, possibly with good reason, believes that people are awful. She rents a home complete with swimming pool and drives there with her family.

The kids, a teenage boy and a pre-teen girl, are plugged in to their own devices. These devices are their first clue that something is wrong – particularly for Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) who can no longer access reruns of “Friends” after her device cuts off just before the final episode.

Things get weirder when the owners of the house, father and daughter G.H. and Ruth (Mahershala Ali and Myha’la Herrold) show up. They don’t want much, just to sleep overnight in their own house, using the “mother-in-law” basement. Their explanation – that a power outage in the city kept them from staying there after a concert – seems phony to Amanda, and there is a hard edge of racism to her rancor, met with equal rancor by Ruth.

In a world filled with what Douglas Adams might have called “useless people,” the father Clay (Ethan Hawke), a language and communications professor, proves himself useful in negotiating with Danny (Kevin Bacon), a survivalist who begins by refusing the families any aid, and ends by offering them the key to survival.

A rare moment of intimacy occurs when the frightened family ends up sleeping together in one bed – the boy is dreadfully sick with no access to medicine, and the rest of them are simply scared witless.

Rose is the only one with a clear idea of what she wants – she wants the world to return to normal, first of all by allowing her access to the end of her favorite program.

“I’m tired of waiting,” she tells her mom, and the next day she is gone, looking for “Friends” who’ll be there for her.

Noticeable in the opening credits are the names Barack and Michelle Obama, which has caused some online criticism. However, it’s hard to detect anything overtly political about the movie.

Now showing on Netflix, the run-time is two hours and 21 minutes.