In 40 Acres, Danielle Deadwyler needs to chill the fuck out.
She’s all business as Hailey, the no-nonsense matriarch of a post-apocalyptic family in this scenic splatterfest. Rocking a hardcore Southern accent in the bucolic mountains of Canada, Hailey is never not on edge. A fungal pandemic has taken out the world’s animals, leaving farmers like Hailey to continually defend themselves against outside scavengers.
But Hailey, a former military grunt (in every sense of the world), has taught her family exactly what to do when strangers enter their premises. That’s in vivid, viscous view in the opening minutes, as the whole fam stealthily wipes out a gang of armed riffraff from their cornfield. Apart from the blood that flies all over the gotdamn place, it’s a well-executed (sorry bout that!) moment of familial teamwork.
Acres puts the violent shit on hold for most of its first half as it presents another tale of a family surviving in a world that’s even scarier now that most of civilization is gone. The property Hailey shares with her Native American boo (Michael Greyeyes) and their blended offspring is a literal fortress, complete with a bunker filled with radio equipment and hella guns.
But even though these family members have built a nice, fenced-off ecosystem for themselves, oldest teen Manny (Kataem O’Connor) starts getting all Little Mermaid-y, yearning to see who/what else is out there. Just as with that Disney property, Manny finds love near water, becoming infatuated with a half-nekkid beauty he sees swimming in a creek (Milcania Diaz-Rojas, appearing double cheeked up on a sunny afternoon — possibly a Thursday) .
If you haven’t figured it out from its historical-reparation title, 40 Acres is a dystopian thriller with blatant, in-your-face racial subtext. (Hailey’s family’s surname is Freeman, for Chrissakes!) As he depicts dark-skinned and brown-skinned characters doing well-oiled-machine work — from growing corn to quietly killing folk — director and co-writer R.T. Thorne basically makes the case that people of color will be the only ones who know what to do when the apocalypse pops off. (We’ve already been scratching and surviving — GOOD TIMES! — for generations.) Of course, all the outside threats in this movie are pale-faced, including a crew of cannibals who could easily pass for Jan. 6 insurrectionists. One dude is even seen wearing horns.
Thorne and screenwriter Glenn Taylor play out the race stuff visually rather than through dialogue, with minorities quietly continuing their pre-apocalyptic practice of keeping an eye out for suspicious/dangerous white people. Deadwyler picks up the generational-trauma slack by playing the angriest sista who ever lived. Carrying over the residual pain and anguish she scarily summoned as Emmitt Till’s mother in Till, the cornrowed Deadwyler plays Hailey as a tortured vet whose soul is just as dark as her wardrobe.
As she mumbles through her dialogue like an old lady who’s covertly giving you the best recipe for ham hocks, Deadwyler makes it apparent that her girl has seen Too Much Shit™ and would rather shoot people than get to know them. Fueled by fear, paranoia and obvious PTSD, Hailey also holds an authoritarian grip on her family, stubbornly thinking she could contain and protect a home bubbling with curious, horny-ass teens.
Deadwyler is such a dour, unsettling presence in Acres — she builds dread and tension long before the actual antagonists show up — that I found myself wanting her family to get away from her in some moments. But Thorne must’ve remembered that his film is supposed to be a rousing actioner, which explains why the movie goes full popcorn flick in its climax. Some smart-ass quips are also thrown in — even Deadwyler’s humorless heroine gets a couple out there.
As much as I wanna give the filmmakers props for getting their I Am Legend on and presenting another end-of-the-world thriller where my people are the badasses, 40 Acres is still a disjointed, melodramatic vision of the future. It’s also anchored by an unnerving lead performance from an actress who should maybe take a break from the serious stuff. I’m starting to get worried about her.
