Prepping for the apocalypse seems to be mostly a white thing. 40 Acres rebalances things a touch. A paranoid survivalist drama set in a world where the “animal biosphere” has been killed off by a pandemic, and a civil war has further screwed things up, most of it plays out in a compound where a non-white family headed by Danielle Deadwyler’s Hailey and Michael Greyeyes’s Galen try to put some some semblance of life back together while fending off attacks from beyond the stockade perimeter.
That “40 Acres” alerts us that something racial going on here. It’s a reference to the 40 acres and a mule promised to freed slaves during the American civil war in a largely failed attempt to right wrongs. Director/co-writer RT Thorne makes the point visually in his opening sequence, in which a bunch of noughty old white dudes arrive at the homestead of Hailey, Glen and co and, after some ostensible declarations of neighbourliness, declare themselves – a gunfight follows, with our guys triumphing thanks to superior organisational skills.
Things cool off a bit from here and a largely domestic drama plays out… until it doesn’t. Galen the benign patriarch, Hailey the stern badass mother keeping things running according to strict protocols. There are, we learn, more of these roaming gangs about, some of them rumoured to be cannibals, so vigilance is paramount.
Thorne does assured, measured world-building, with a montage summing up these survivors’ daily lives of sowing and reaping, checking the perimeter fence, practising combat skills and listening to bulletins from other survivors over the radio. Plot dynamics arrive in the shape of the family’s horny teenager Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor), who one day spots a pretty young woman bathing in the river. This is the crack in the family’s defences that Hailey hasn’t prepped for. A guy who wants to sow his oats is not going to take it well if his mother won’t let him out of the house.
A touch zombie movie, maybe, in the cannibal aspect, but there is an element of the back-to-basics survivalism of A Quiet Place. For the most part the focus is on Deadwyler’s Hailey, whose insistence on strict adherence to her way is in contention throughout. Is she overdoing it? Why so vigilant? What’s more – why does she have a Southern USA accent when she’s a born and bred Canadian, or so we’re told? The slave ancestors still loom large in Hailey’s mind is the idea, and her isolationist tendencies are informed by her blackness. A point is being made, perhaps a touch heavy handedly.
The racial aspect to one side, it’s one for the preppers, the conservatives and the gun-lovers – preparedness is next to godliness, family is all, shoot first ask questions later, these are the rules Hailey lives by and they’ve kept her and her family alive, so…
Kataem O’Connor is the lean and handsome bait but Deadwyler is the badass trap in this movie. Again her performance stands out – see Parallel (more survivor jeopardy) and I Saw the TV Glow for of the same, plus that little guest spot in the TV show The Bear, where she was also impressive against a formidable cast. Greyeyes’s Galen doesn’t make that much of an impression, but then none of the rest of them do, except for Milcania Diaz-Rojas’s Dawn, the hottie in question.
It could be a pilot for a TV show like The Walking Dead and doubtless it would run and run. Thorne has the measure of his story and has got the balance right, between the drabness of everyday life following unvarying routine and the sudden explosiveness when danger comes to play.
40 Acres – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
