Directed By R.T Thorne

Starring – Danielle Deadwyler, Kateem O’Connor, Michael Greyeyes

The Plot – Hailey Freeman (Deadwyler) and her family are the last descendants of African American farmers who settled in 1875 in rural Canada after the first Civil War. In a famine-decimated future they struggle to make their last stand against those intent on taking their home

Rated R for strong bloody violent content and adult language.

40 ACRES | Official Restricted Trailer | Mongrel Media

POSITIVES

For his feature length directorial debut, R.T Thorne channels the Dystopian setting in a refreshingly compelling element of grounded reality that not only taps into some preconceived societal vulnerabilities towards giving it a richly realized conflict to interpret, but also a roaringly ferocious style of direction that cements such a tensely riveting engagement. On the former, the title certainly alludes to the unfulfilled promise that African-Americans were given after the Civil War, helping to illustrate an already divided stance among its scattered characters, but in centering the film around a grave food crisis, where farmland now serves as a currency of sorts, that racial divide reaches boiling levels of confrontation among communities turned to cannibals, shrouding everyone outside of our fore-frontal family in a cloud of ambiguity that we tensely confront, like the very distrust sewn so strongly in our protagonists, all the while showcasing the crazily frenzied side of humanity’s darkest intuitions, as the hungry emulate everything that we’ve come to expect from blood-thirsty zombies in these kinds of movies. The storytelling is persistently casual without feeling rushed or heavy-handed, with visual cues and interactions between characters meant to coherently illustrate insight into the vital moments in the lives of these characters that we only briefly got to experience in flashbacks, and the conflict flourishes impactfully as a result of constant miscommunication, which seems to be the message of intent to the experience. There’s also a bit of a moral debate within the everyday operations of this Freeman farm, where the kids are treated like soldiers in a boot camp, all in the means of preparing them for the savages that they could inevitably stumble across on a bad day. While sacrificial youth is always an apparent factor in these kinds of Dystopian movies, the script isn’t afraid of pursuing it further while subscribing to some ample food for thought with regards to a lack of community and experiences that make up the vital experiences to such a tender age, and while I was impressed by the well-oiled machine that was the family’s self-defense system, the script can’t help but clue us into an internalized longing that persists within these children, particularly the oldest boy, who got to experience a normal adolescence before the world went to Hell. Thorne’s direction brilliantly articulates dread, urgency, and vulnerability in the depths of his rendered atmosphere, with these tensely riveting sequences reveling in darkness and shadows that conjure so much uncertainty and mental manipulation to just what we’re seeing transpiring in the unfocused distance, and with masterfully persistent instrumental work from Todor Kobakov continuously ratcheting the sound mixing of his compositions, the marriage between sight and sound seamlessly subscribes to the kind of palpable tension that makes these scenes such an exciting edge-of-your-seat thrill to experience, with emphasis early on in the film that nobody, regardless of age, is safe from these manic maniacs. These sequences also take full advantage vividly exploiting the movie’s cherished R-rating, with brutally unforgiving violence and the occasional carnage candy that prove the limitless extent that not only Hailey will go towards defending her family and land, but also how far these cannibals will go to satisfy their meaty urges. While there is the occasional C.G blood deposit, particularly during the movie’s opening act, the gashes and wounds are surprisingly realized with a gruesomely gnarly display of practicality that artistically elicits some scene-stealing production value during the movie’s most physically memorable sequences, proving violent indulgence in sporadic doses, even with this being an independent film that subscribes to a deeper meaning. Most importantly, above everything else, the performances from Danielle Deadwyler and Kateem O’Connor, who each bring so much versatile range and psychology to their respective portrayals, are remarkable in how they convey and command emotion to the camera, especially while sharing scenes alongside each other. O’Connor’s work as Emanuel is nothing short of gut-wrenching, particularly while embodying so much resentment and intimation for his parental unit that borders psychologically abusive. But when he comes into contact with an outsider, it ignites a flame of intensity and maturity from within him that sees him evolving into the leader he was destined to become, sending O’Connor into the stratosphere with a turn that nearly steals the movie. Unfortunately for him, he’s working alongside Deadwyler, who is not only one of the elite dramatic actresses working today, but also such a captivating presence by her boldly emotive eyes embodying everything from fear and paranoia to anger and betrayal. Deadwyler already conveyed the crippling frailty of depression, earlier this year in “The Woman in the Yard”, but here demands attention for the ruthlessly resilient badass that feels like the fantastical manifestation of every housewife ever, with Danielle effectively shifting the setting temperature and tone of any scene she sees fit, with the kind of unbridled intensity that is quickly making her one of my favorite actresses working today.

NEGATIVES

As far as mistakes go, “40 Acres” makes one forgivable one, as well as one not so forgivable one, and it takes what should be one of the year’s best films down a noticeable step, as a result of squandered priorities that could speak volumes to Thorne’s aforementioned inexperience. In terms of the less harmful, the supporting characters of this family are illustrated a bit thin, especially in contrast to Hailey and Emanuel, leaving me a lack of investment to them during the moments where each of their lives are put in peril. While I totally understand that the dynamic between Mother and Son is ultimately what drives the narrative forward, I felt that there was plenty of time to appraise value to what the other half of this family lent to the film, and considering the script taps into the meanings and merits of childhood, as previously mentioned, it’s disappointing that it couldn’t materialize anything for those youths who never got to experience life before this food crisis took shape. As for the bigger problem with the film, there’s this unnecessarily episodic framing device with the movie’s structure that divides depicted characters into individualized sections, and it ends up wreaking more havoc on the film’s integrity, rather than adding anything that makes it an impactful tool of storytelling. Not only do these abrupt transitions to on-screen text result in surmised edits during the most meaningful time of a conflict confrontation in the previous foreground of a scene reaching a boiling point, but it also transitions from past to present about as compromisingly sloppy as you can get with multi-tiered storytelling, resulting in growing pains for the movie’s pacing that constantly has to slow itself down, each time one of these screen scrolls comes into make a certain section feel vitally more important than it actually is. For my money, the script should’ve simply utilized the past in either dream sequences or during scenes where characters are left alone with their intimate thoughts, as nothing uncovered truly demanded so much time taken away from the far more entertainingly enlightening arc at the foreground of the story. But the intrusion continuously takes away from the vividness and detailing of the deteriorated world-building, in turn overcomplicating the air of its execution with artistic flourishes that never justified the constantly plunges to the past.

OVERALL
“40 Acres” is a poignantly profound look into a Dystopian future where the pasts of its characters motivate the actions of the present, in turn unlocking the worst in society when law and order give way to racially-fueled anarchy. Led astonishingly by a gripping performance from Danielle Deadwyler, as well as a ferociously frenzied directorial debut from R.T Thorne, this post-apocalyptic drama never bites off more than it can chew, with regards to its sensible storytelling, enacting a situational study towards isolationism that sneaks up on you, especially when you least expect it

My Grade: 8.4 or B+