From Mr Robot to the World After Us: is the Netflix film linked to Sam Esmail’s cult series?

“Something totally unconscious!” The creator talks to us about his obsessions as a filmmaker and his relationship with technology.

Just four years later, Sam Emsail is back with The World After Us. December 8, 2019, Mr Robot was ending. December 8, 2023, his new film arrives on Netflix. A paranoid work, fueled by the creator’s obsessions, and which is reminiscent of the cult series.

In Mr Robot, a hacker revolution is collapsing American society, secretly dominated by the multinational E-Corp. In The World After Usit is a cybernetic attack that collapses America, with the same ambition to tell the story of humans in the face of chaos. “How do we all react when everything collapses around us? We easily lose track of our most basic humanity. When we should stick together more than ever, it’s there that we divide and oppose each other. I find that fascinating”entrusts Sam Esmail at Première.

In The World After Us, the director still places emphasis on new technologies and a certain dependence of Man on digital progress. However, the filmmaker assures us that he is not a technophobe and that digital society is not what he wants to denounce as a priority:

“I have never intended, in my work, to make technology the big bad. I am not a technophobe. Far from it. I love new technologies, I grew up being obsessed with computers, believing that the Internet would help bring humanity closer together. But we saw how all that could turn against us, what it can bring out in humans… And that’s what my passion.”

So is there ultimately a link between Mr Robot And The World After Us ?

Spoiler alert! Fans of Sam Esmail will have noted that the last scene of the film curiously echoes the last scene of the series. Rose manages to watch the latest episode of Friends and his face is illuminated by a screen that lights up. In the same way that Elliott’s face was illuminated by a movie screen, in the final sequence of Mr Robot. Coincidence?

“That’s a good thing! It’s incredible… because I didn’t think about it at all!” answers us Sam Esmailwhich ensures that the reference is purely coincidental.

“Clearly, it’s not done on purpose. But now it makes me think: maybe it’s something totally unconscious! Because I like being in front of a screen, it’s the place where I feel Well, there’s something subconscious in all that. You may have put your finger on something in my brain that I didn’t really realize…”