As much as I love me some good post-apocalyptic storytelling, whether it be zombies or spores or meteors causing the end of society as we know it, the dystopian horror theme that truly shakes my core is when humans brutally turn on humans to survive.
40 Acres imagines a world where 98% of all animal life (including humans) has been decimated by a fungal plague, leading to a civil war, the collapse of the global food chain, and worldwide famine. A dozen or so years later, a makeshift family fiercely protects their farm from violent intruders who intend to take away more then just their crops. With an electrified fence, surveillance cameras all over the property, and an arsenal of weaponry, the family survives with a setup that would get a nod of respect from any of the survivors of The Walking Dead.
Danielle Deadwyler holds down the fort—literally and figuratively—as Hailey Freeman, an ex-military woman and proud descendant of African American farmers who settled in Canada in the late 1800s. Holding on to this land is her life, and she has trained her brood—a blended family with her Indigenous partner Galen (Michael Greyeyes), including two daughters and her teenage son Manny (Kataem O’Connor)—to fight to the death to protect their farm. In a world without meat, farmland is the most valuable commodity. But if you have an insatiable taste for flesh, there’s still one obvious source. (Shudder.)
Fans of shows like The Last of Us or The Walking Dead will appreciate 40 Acres, which feels like a tangential chapter of those worlds. Writer/director R.T. Thorne scored a coup getting the magnetic Deadwyler as the star. Despite being small woman with huge, haunted eyes, her grim expression and coiled stance clearly show she is not a person to be messed with. With the heroic cast being almost entirely Black or Indigenous (and the terrifying cannibal marauders being almost entirely white men), it’s refreshing to see a story where the leader you’d want to align with is the tiny Black woman with the most to fight for.
With his feature directorial debut, R.T. Thorne delivers a gripping survival film told from the perspective of underrepresented (Black) and barely-if-ever-represented (Indigenous) characters, breathing fresh life into familiar tropes. Thorne stages several thrilling and harrowing sequences, including one standout that uses extremely limited illumination to create a nightmare scenario. With rifles, knives, and machetes in play, it’s no surprise that 40 Acres is not for the queasy. Still, there are a couple of moments that made me gasp and slap a hand over my eyes—images I doubt I’ll be able to cleanse from my psyche anytime soon.
