Director: R.T. Thorne
Writers: R.T. Thorne, Glenn Taylor, Lora Campbell
Stars: Danielle Deadwyler, Kataem O’Connor, Michael Greyeyes, Milcania Diaz-Rojas
Synopsis: Hailey Freeman and her family are the last descendants of African American farmers who settled in rural Canada after the Civil War. In a famine-decimated near future, they now struggle to safeguard their farm, as they make one last stand against a vicious militia hell-bent on taking their 40 Acres
The words “famine-decimated” and “vicious militia” are doing a fair bit of heavy lifting in the case of R.T. Thorn’es debut feature, 40 Acres, considering how, with them subtracted and a few flesh-eaters added in, the film would be imperceptible from yet another apocalyptic thriller. The last few years have already had its handful of them, hence the italicized groan in the last sentence. Said gripe has less to do with the quality of films like 28 Years Later, In the Lost Lands, or The Gorge. (Okay, maybe it has to do with the quality of The Gorge.) But, as is often the case, familiarity can end up feeling synonymous with enervation. What counts is whether or not you can transcend the exhaustion of the garden-variety apocalypse narrative, thus crafting something original and refreshing despite recognizable tropes.
40 Acres nearly crosses that threshold, though it also feels unmistakably like an extended cutscene from The Last of Us, or worse yet, AMC’s forever-running series The Walking Dead, especially as the story evolved beyond the need for zombies to be the most terrifying entity in the room. Viewers who counted themselves among the dedicated many to latch onto the journeys of Rick Grimes, Daryl Dixon, Carol, Glenn, Maggie, and others in the early seasons of Frank Darabont’s show always feared the presence of biters, but once villains like The Governor (David Morrissey) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) showed up, it was clear that harm’s way was down every trail these characters could possibly traverse, undead notwithstanding.
It’s admittedly disingenuous to compare Thorne’s film to the cyclical nature of a series that lost its own way midway through its run on the small screen, but the comparisons are hard to miss: A family lives on a farm, protecting their land, and facing constant opposition from neighboring armies of misfit madmen eager to take what doesn’t belong to them. Outsiders are to be feared, not entertained. That’s how Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler) – a former soldier – and her husband, Galen (Michael Greyeyes) conduct things in their houseland and the land it sits on, a deeply personal undertaking that dates back centuries to when Hailey’s ancestors settled there (the film takes place in Canada; its director is from Calgary) after escaping Civil War-era Georgia. The movie’s exhilarating opening sequence sees Hailey, Galen, and their family – most notably their 20-something son, Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor) – fending off intruders, of which there are many more hidden on the outskirts. If only the remainder of its runtime maintained such exhilaration.
Not that every apocalypse picture needs to move a mile a minute; if that were the case, we’d grow more exhausted by the proceedings themselves than the plottiness they’re steeped in. Yet 40 Acres never manages to evolve beyond the “keep the outsiders out” mantra that its lead character preaches with the fury of an angry judge banging her gavel through the wood of her stand. That Hailey is judge, jury, and primary executioner makes matters even more complicated: It would be one thing if she was stern, but it’s another to watch her rigidity foster an environment that begs for rebellion, something Emanuel can’t help but inch toward. When he notices a beautiful stranger (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) swimming in a river near his home, his curiosity piques and his eyes bulge (along with something a little lower on his body). When questions swirl about whether or not Dawn is who she says she is, and the family’s land comes under attack (again, and repeatedly, all in relatively rapid succession), it’s not particularly difficult to clock where and when the first domino was nudged.
Thorne has a tight grasp on what makes for compelling violence in a realm such as this, and it’s easy to imagine his future in film being far brighter than that of the characters he has drawn here, to say nothing of their fates as more outsiders invade over the course of almost two hours. But so little of 40 Acres seems to care about being anything more than a one-note tale at the end of the world, as though it drove itself into a proverbial dead end and said, “Yeah, this feels like a good place to set up shop.” It’s a dark, picturesque movie that is light on its feet enough to not cause the weight of its overlong runtime to bear down on you – a credit not just to Dev Singh and Sandy Pereira’s editing, but to the images cinematographer Jeremy Benning provided them – but it’s also a film with a great deal of thematic heft (chief among them, how race remains omnipresent, even in dystopia) at its disposal that it chooses to forego for the blander path, not the more contemplative one. (Even Deadwyler, its stalwart star, seems to be trudging through plottiness in search of deeper meaning.) Movies like this one have promise in theory, but without proper care become commonplace and rote, 40 Acres being case in point. It doesn’t help that 40 Acres and the many similar films to follow in its wake feel far less apocalyptic the more frequent they become.
40 Acres is now playing in select theaters.
