40 Acres Review: Danielle Deadwyler’s Otherwise Solid Lead Performance Can’t Overcome R.T. Thorne’s Sluggish Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

40 Acres marks the feature-length directorial debut of R.T. Thorne, previously a music video vet and TV director for series such as Blindspot and Kung Fu. The movie boasts a familiar but intriguing premise: Set in the post-apocalyptic era, where we learn a fungal pandemic has eradicated 98% of the animal biosphere over a decade ago. Then comes the Second Civil War due to the downfall of the food chain worldwide, leading to the planet-wide famine that has since made farmland the most valuable commodity.

Thorne, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Glenn Taylor, doesn’t waste time getting off to a promising start as a group of armed marauders trespassing a private property located somewhere in rural Canada. What follows next is a strategic attack led by Hailey (Danielle Deadwyler), the matriarch of the Freeman family, who inherits the farmland. Together with the assistance of his indigenous partner, Galen (Michael Greyeyes) and their children: 18-year-old son Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor) and three daughters, including Raine (Leenah Robinson), Danis (Jaeda LeBlanc) and Cookie (Haile Amre), they work together to take down the marauders.

The opening minutes set the uncompromising tone just right as the Freemans sneakily ambush them from every direction. They use different kinds of weapons, from a sniper rifle to a pistol and a machete, ensuring these marauders are dead. Here, Thorne’s muscular direction proves he has what it takes to stage a tense and violent action sequence. The kills are more straightforward and executed pragmatically, as Thorne isn’t interested in going for either creative or over-the-top gore.

Following an intriguing start, the movie slows down to make way for exploring the Freemans’ tight-knit family dynamics rather than focusing on the bigger picture surrounding its post-apocalyptic storytelling angle. For a while there, by zeroed in on a more intimate side of how the Freemans support each other and stay alive for so long. We learn that they live by the strict rules set by Hailey, who used to be a soldier.

Not surprisingly, tight discipline matters, and everyone must follow orders with no questions asked. They are mostly on their own and living in an isolated life within the confines of the farmland, even though Hailey still communicates with other farmers using the ham radio, including one of them named Augusta (Elizabeth Saunders).

But things eventually changed when Emanuel decides to let a wounded stranger named Dawn (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) into their fenced property one night, despite being against the family’s no-outsider rule. The stranger in question turns out to be the same young woman he often saw swimming in a river near the farmland.

While I admire the actors’ commitments to their roles, notably Deadwyler’s no-nonsense turn as the steely Hailey, Thorne’s decision to use a supposedly deliberate slow-burn narrative approach to tell his story drags more than it immerses me deeply into the lives of the Freemans. It doesn’t help either when the so-called coming-of-age story of the stubborn Emanuel, whose gradual ill-fated decision in breaking the family rule soon triggers a bigger problem, isn’t carrying as much dramatic or emotional weight as I thought it would be.

Not to mention the movie is taking quite a stretch to pick up the pace, and you have to wait around the 80-minute mark before the threat in the form of a group of flesh-eating cannibals starts invading the Freemans’ farmland. The ensuing action is brutal, but there are times it frustrates me with the movie’s dim lighting, and Jeremy Benning’s murky cinematography makes it hard to see what’s really going on, particularly when it takes place at night.

Again, Deadwyler is the star of the show, and she steals every scene here, but too bad even with Thorne showing some promise in the action department and leaving ample room for most of his actors to excel in their roles, 40 Acres still feels like a missed opportunity.