Yahoo Movies Leave the World Behind's Sam Esmail explains the "menacing" deer
Leave the World Behind has left Netflix viewers with a lot of questions, but one of the biggest ones centres on its weird, creepy deer.
During the apocalyptic thriller, deer keep appearing at the house and its surroundings. They never do anything, although when there are dozens of them around Amanda and Ruth, they certainly don't look friendly.
As with Leave the World Behind's other mysteries, there's not a reason given for the deer in the movie.
However, director Sam Esmail has explained why deer were chosen – and it's not just because they're in the book.
Related: Sam Esmail knows Leave the World Behind might split audiences
Esmail told 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.
"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."
So there you have it, there's no particular reason why the deer are acting so strangely, but Esmail just knew it would freak audiences out and he was absolutely right.
Unsurprisingly, the film didn't use any real deer, but CGI ones.
Related: Leave the World Behind star Myha'la explains "genius" change from the book
Esmail added: "It's a testament to Chris Harvey, my VFX supervisor; Dione [Wood], my VFX producer; and Alec [Hart], who's on the VFX team.
"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."
Leave the World Behind is available to watch on Netflix now.
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