The Canadian film 40 Acres belongs to an evolutionary strain of recent Black cinema that follows paths to fear, loathing, gore, and artistic fantasy scenarios, with socio-historical commentary and Black lives issues cleverly tucked into the narrative folds. Horror, sci-fi, and thriller genres have become fair game for reinvention in Jordan Peele’s domestic meltdown tales Get Out and Us, up through the zombie-trodden zone of Ryan Coogler’s (Black Panther) recent Sinners.
In most cases, this new brand of edgy and reality-bending cinema deploys artistic concepts and manages to appeal to a broader (and whiter) audience, which might more readily bask in gonzo-genre films over, say, 12 Years a Slave. Despite some shortcomings, 40 Acres belongs in the subgenre.
Written and directed by RT Thomas, his directorial debut after working in television and music videos, 40 Acres places its particular and very specific location and acreage on a plot of Canadian farmland secured by ex-slaves after the Civil War — fittingly dubbed the “Freeman farm.” Fast forward to a post-apocalyptic future date, and this emancipation-bequeathed “40 acres” has become a harsh battle zone in a future beset by wars and ecological disasters. Sinister and desperate militant forces, including “flesh eaters,” come bearing weaponry and vicious intentions for taking over the farm.
Danielle Deadwyler stars, and powerfully, as Hailey Freeman, an ex-soldier who has returned to the family farm to tend and fiercely protect her brood, turning it into a high-security compound. She and her family, including the First Nations father figure (Jaeda LeBlanc) are equipped to dispense defensive gunfire and ultra-violence with extreme prejudice — often with well-placed bullets to the heads of the pernicious and murderous interlopers.
In this kill-or-be-killed atmosphere of dread and dystopian bleakness, xenophobia has become a matter of survival. A toxic mistrust for a young woman taken in by the smitten son Emmanuel (Kataem O’Connor) yields only slowly to mercy. But this comes only after a gun-toting Mama Freeman demands answers from the woman, lest “your brains gonna’ be fertilizers all over the field.” And she means it.
Production-wise, the film works resourcefully with its one-location property, compared to a prohibitive Mad Max–y retro-futurist milieu, no doubt partly due to budget constraints. In this case, though, the necessarily tight insularity of the location helps to accentuate the claustrophobic tension of the coveted property.
For all its strengths and freshness of contextual vision, 40 Acres at some point suffers from literal overkill. A lot of nasty violent business goes down in the struggle for survival, to the point where matters of character and story development get fairly well buried beneath the carnage. Artistic merits threaten to slip into a pulpier cinematic state. Still and all, the film’s unique premise and set of social issues are smartly tucked into a narrative with thriller machinations lubing the way. No major plot spoiler rule is broken by reporting that, despite some battlefield losses along the way, the Freeman family farm — and bond — prevail.
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