This movie predicts that in the post-apocalyptic near-future, the most valuable commodity
will be fertile agricultural land—exactly the sort of American farmland China
has been buying at an alarming rate. The Freemans’ farm happens to be in
Canada, but there is no way they would have ever sold, even in better days,
because the family went through so much to get it. Unfortunately, outlaw gangs
keep trying to steal it. The latest prospective claim-jumpers will be the most
savage in R.T. Thorne’s 40 Acres, which opens today in theaters.
Viewers
can see from the prologue Hailey Freeman and her family know how to protect
what is theirs. That is why her ideologically-charged home-schooling curriculum
makes absolutely no sense. They are preppers, through and through. A vague
semblance of community persists, maintained by shortwave radio, but each week
another farm goes dark. Freeman is not inclined to stick her neck out for anyone,
but her son Emanuel has teenaged hormones and not a girl his age in sight. Not surprisingly,
when he secretly spies Dawn enjoying a swimming hole during a scavenging trip,
she makes quite an impression.
Unfortunately,
the latest batch of marauders attacking family farms are particularly nasty, in
ways similar to The Road. They aren’t just stealing food. They’re
hunting it too. Is Dawn one of the cannibals or is she a post-apocalyptic
normie? Emanuel probably wouldn’t be the best to judge.
At its
core, 40 Acres is largely a prepper survival thriller in the tradition
of Homestead and One Second After, but with casting and cosmetic
stylistic changes made to appeal to diversity-conscious film fest audiences.
Yet, it hits the same notes and offers the same takeaways as every previous
prepper shoot-out. Basically, it boils down to: expect the worse and prepare
yourself, first and foremost, by heavily arming your family.
Yet, by
the standards of the genre, 40 Acres (an obvious reference to Union Gen.
Tecumseh Sherman’s promise of reparations, which actually never mentioned the
mule) is quite well made and surprisingly grabby.
The
cast is consistently strong, especially Danielle Deadwyler, who maybe delivers
a career best performance as the exhaustingly intense Freeman matriarch.
Michael Greyeyes nicely compliments her as Freeman’s second husband, who projects
a reassuring calm, but is really just as fiercely protective. Arguably, Elizabeth
Saunders makes it all watchable with her scene-stealing comic relief (until stuff
gets even more dire), as Freeman’s ex-marine crony, Augusta Taylor.
In William Forstchen’s One Second After, it was an electro-magnetic
pulse that unleashed havoc across America. It was a slightly more conventional
nuclear bomb in Jason Ross & Jeff Kirkham’s Black Autumn novels.
This film (and the forthcoming streaming series it sets up) adapts the latter,
but fans of the former will surely feel at home during Ben Smallbone’s Homestead,
from Angel Studios, which opens this Friday in theaters.
Like
the survivors, viewers have a very incomplete picture of the Armageddon that
transpired, but apparently a boat loaded with nuke’s detonated off the
California coast, right before a cyber-attack (reportedly from Russia) brought
down the power grid along the Atlantic coast. As a result, panic swept the
country, overwhelming governments at every level. However, Ian Ross was
prepared.
The
wealthy prepper had converted his Rocky Mountain “Homestead” ranch into a
doomsday compound with farmland, vineyards, and extensive stores of supplies,
including, of course, guns. He also hired a security team of former special ops
to keep them safe from marauders.
Jeff
Ericksson is very good at his job, maintaining a secure perimeter. However,
Ross’s wife Jenna argues in favor of letting more survivors into Homestead.
Some of Ericksson’s men adamantly oppose, with a vehemence that is a bit alarming.
Ross is somewhere in the middle, mindful of his limited resources, but also recognizing
their human plight. As for Ericksson, he general agrees with his men, but he
also has his family at Homestead, including his wife Tara and three children,
so he worries about what kind of community they might grow up amidst.
So
far, his oldest son Abe has taken to Homestead quite well, but it is mainly due
to Ross’s home-schooled daughter Claire. It most respects, the teenaged
Ericksson remains just as snippy and churlish towards his father as ever.
Before long, legit bad guys also try to gate-crash, including a government
bureaucrat (very much in the mold of Ghostbusters’ Walter Peck) who
thinks he has the right and authority to commandeer Homestead’s supplies.
Frankly,
it makes sense Homestead is set in the Rockies, because the mountainous
region would likely have a very high survival rate. The population density is
low, the rate of gun ownership is high, and Mormons on the Utah side would have
three months off food on hand, as per Church teachings. Without question, it
depicts prepping and survivalism with much more intelligence than the recent Year 10, but it is not as cerebrally speculative as Earth Abides.
It
is also nice to see Neal McDonough playing a good guy, like Ross, who is much more
reflective of his values than the villains he often plays. In fact, he is
perfectly cast as the steely rancher, who accurately predicted the physical
needs of survival, but had less foresight when it came to the human element.
