Stream It Or Skip It: ‘40 Acres’ on Hulu, a Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Pitting a Fierce Danielle Deadwyler Against Roving Cannibals

40 Acres (now streaming on Hulu) is a nicely accomplished directorial debut by R.T. Thorne. Essentially a vehicle for the signature thorny complexities of Danielle Deadwyler, the film is a mostly rooted-in-realism – well, as rooted in realism as any movie featuring roving packs of cannibals can get, anyway – post-apocalyptic thriller about a family fighting to survive after a pandemic, civil war and famine has ravaged civilization. Co-scripting with Glenn Taylor, Thorne invokes Indigenous- and Black-American history as much as he does the classic scenarios and style of B-genre films, and the result is the rare action-thriller bolstered by thoughtful thematic consideration. It’s a surprising, modestly enthralling gem.

40 ACRES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: This farm has been in Hailey Freeman’s (Deadwyler) family for nearly 200 years, and she’ll be damned if anyone is going to take it from her. Granted, she left it for a while, joining the military and leaving behind her baby son, but she’s back now, and ready to defend it with everything she’s got. Life As We Know It went kaput a decade-and-a-half ago, and we learn in a flashback that Hailey saw unspeakable inhumanity as the world fell apart during her duty – so it makes sense that she wants to preserve what’s left of what’s good here on her acreage. And that acreage, any acreage, is the most valuable commodity in a world where food is scarce, meat no longer exists except on (ulp) human bones, and what grows from the land is like gold.

Hailey’s grueling experience has clearly left her jaded when it comes to trusting other people. It’s also left her prepared. She and her partner Galen (Michael Greyeyes) stapled their families together and had children of their own. They number six total, which gives double meaning to one of Hailey’s core philosophies: “Watch your six,” which, if you’re not enlightened, is military jargon for “don’t get your ass ambushed by flesh eating hillbilly mofos.” And she runs this family like a military unit: Everyone knows how to fight and shoot a gun (what do they shoot at their targeting range? Useless-ass smartphones!); you mouth off at the dinner table, you drop and give her 20; you do as you’re told by your superior, who knows better, or else. We’re introduced to this group as many very smelly-looking armed men get past the electrified, razor-wire fence and try to invade the compound, and get sniped, slashed and gutted for their trouble. Cannibals, trespass at your own risk.

Hailey and Galen oversee a tight operation. They tend the fields so they can eat, and go on salvage runs to stock their basement panic room/armory/infirmary/communication station. Yep, it’s quite the HQ they’ve managed to build with limited resources in a fairly short amount of time but stop poking holes and just be impressed, please. Hailey chats on the CB with an old friend on another farm, and together they piece together what’s going on in the outside world; it’s never good. The only chink in the family’s armor is Hailey’s teenage son Manny (Kataem O’Connor), who’s starting to summon the courage to push back against his mother’s harsh outlook. He’s idealistic and wants to trust other people; she’s cynical and prefers isolationism. 

The conflict is really put to the test when Manny’s out on a solo patrol and peers out from behind a bush and sees Dawn (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) splashing in the creek in her skivvies. Hi there! He goes home and lounges in bed thinking about her with his hand in his drawers and Moms just busts in without knocking and the interruptus of it all paints the picture with dynamic clarity. Sure, the dude’s hormonally compromised, but he has a point – is a life of constant paranoia and distrust one worth living? Is there room in this decimated world to believe in the goodness of others? When Dawn turns up just outside the fence panicking, bleeding and asking for help, and Manny hides her in the barn, well, it looks like it’s going to take tests of everybody’s will to find answers to these questions. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: 40 Acres resembles post-calamity survival thrillers that aren’t too greatly divorced from our own real world, like Civil War and The Road, with some elements of more fantastical stuff along the lines of 28 Years Later and A Quiet Place.

Performance Worth Watching: Deadwyler is as unafraid as ever to play a tangled,  complicated, conflicted and often unlikeable character (see also: her tour-de-force in The Piano Lesson). Hailey can be cold, even cold-blooded, but behind her furiously wide eyes is a woman projecting her fears on others with good reason; extreme conditions demand extreme responses, and without speaking a word, Deadwyler communicates how broken and compromised she is on the inside. Her on-screen portrayals are so often painfully real, regardless of genre.

Memorable Dialogue: Hailey lays down the law to the fam: “Watch your six. Shoot first, don’t ask questions. We ain’t waiting on no revenge. They’re gonna end up dead any damn way. Clear?”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The prickly morality of this story turns up right there in the opening sequence when Manny hesitates to finish off one of the interlopers. He pulls off the ski mask and it’s a young woman whimpering for help – then Hailey steps in and puts the final bullet in her. The ethical tug-of-war will play out in greater detail via dialogue later, but right off the bat, this is Thorne establishing the internal and external conflicts with action and visuals. The director establishes the setting, the characters within it, and the friction among them with thrilling concision. 

From there, Thorne steadily shapes and builds upon the conflict between Manny and Hailey into an engaging, deceptively simple morality play in which the heart says yes and the head says no, and one’s not certain which is wiser. In the cracks and margins, Thorne makes sure there’s more to the story than basic survivalism – the title 40 Acres is a clear nod to the struggles Hailey’s slave ancestors endured to attain and maintain this land, and Galen regularly speaks and teaches his native Cree language so something rich and beautiful and rooted in his people doesn’t die in this miserable mess like so much else has. Amidst the shooting and chasing, the close scrapes and crafty bushwhacking, is an idea worth fighting for: the preservation of not just life, but history.

Sure, the film plays out somewhat predictably, and our protagonist family’s military fortitude may test your suspension of disbelief, but conventional execution of drama and action doesn’t waylay the thoughtful execution of Thorne’s ideas. The director indulges some horrific imagery to shock us, but also keep the narrative grounded – the bad guys are a terrifying existential threat. And those bad guys don’t look like ghouls or demons; they’re redneck stereotypes adorned with bone trophies, and lord help me, but the guy wearing the antlered pelt looks a lot like the QAnon Shaman. The narrative is steady in its tone and pace, with a couple of poignant and necessary flashbacks that are never indulgent. Thorne makes the absolute most of a sub-modest $8 million budget, using it to craft a world filled with dread. But it takes true ambition to inject that world with enough hope to keep it from sinking. 

Our Call: 40 Acres is an engrossing, well-crafted gem of a thriller, as smart as it is entertaining. STREAM IT.

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How To Watch 40 Acres

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John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.