In a crushing blow to anyone who claims they’d rather be dead than vegan, a fungal plague wiped out animal life on planet earth 14 years ago. The natural disaster effectively wiped out thousands of years of human economic development, turning us back into an agrarian society overnight. Land has become the most important resource on planet Earth, and anyone who owns their own farm is both blessed with the resources they need to survive and burdened by the knowledge that people are trying to kill them at all times. And because people still need protein, cannibalism is making a regrettable comeback.
So begins “40 Acres,” a dystopian home invasion saga anchored by a phenomenally grizzled Movie Star Performance from Danielle Deadwyler. The actress stars as Hailey Freeman, a former soldier who runs a family farm and is all too aware of the kinds of people who would love to take it from her. Even in a world that’s now firmly focused on the bottom level of Maslow’s pyramid, Hailey is determined to make sure her son Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor) and stepdaughter Raine (Leenah Robinson) have some semblance of a humanities education. In addition to all the farming and self-defense lessons, she makes them read the classics and assigns book reports for good measure.
Her rigid discipline has created the closest thing that you can find to a conventional nuclear family under such dire circumstances, but it’s all predicated on her having complete control over everyone. And children don’t stay young forever.
The danger has only increased as of late, with an influx in cannibals infiltrating farms posing as soldiers making routine inspections. That has led Hailey to tighten her grip on her children at the very moment when the teenage Emanuel is starting to crave independence. The situation comes to a head when a new girl (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) appears in the forest. Emanuel’s desire to protect her clashes with Hailey’s military mom instincts, leading to a collision that forces everyone to consider how much safety is worth giving up for freedom and vice versa.
“40 Acres” marks the feature debut of R.T. Thorne, who has found plenty of success directing TV episodes and music videos over the past two decades. The film benefits from his steady visual hand, with elegantly composed shots of swooping landscapes and hard-won food that illustrate just how inseparable this dystopian society is from the farmland that these characters are willing to die for. Thorne also knows exactly how to shoot his leading lady, framing Deadwyler’s militant Hailey with the imposing gravitas the character deserves as she rules with an iron fist in order to shield her children from outside horrors. The strong visual language elevates the film over plenty of other limited-location dystopian survival stories that have come and gone over the years — a good thing, since this is one of the few that actually has something to say.
You don’t have to look too hard to see the sci-fi film’s overt engagement with American history. It takes its title from the infamous broken promise that every freed slave would receive 40 acres and a mule to rebuild their lives during Reconstruction, and follows a Black woman named Freeman who owns her own farm. Natural disasters that wipe out civilization as we know it and turn everyone into cannibals have a funny way of making us forget about the past in favor of more timely concerns, so Thorne’s decision to essentially reboot history gives him a largely blank canvas that’s unburdened by what came before.
But in this new world, just like the last one, land ownership continues to be the most valuable currency around which all other economic relationships are formed. By turning the tables and making a Black woman the landowner, the filmmaker manages to both subvert the past and illustrate the same economic forces that led to all the inequality we still face in the real world.
It all makes for a fitting Fourth of July weekend viewing, with plenty of cannibal combat thrown in for good measure.
Grade: B+
A Magnolia Pictures release, “40 Acres” opens in theaters on Wednesday, July 2.
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