40 Acres Review: Brown Apocalyptic Mush

40 Acres is another post-apocalyptic survival thriller that fails to stand out in an oversaturated genre, even with the commendable intimate focus on family.

Fortunately, the Freeman family has their own farmland that they can live off, but after a stupid mistake by the oldest son, a violent militia is standing on their doorstep looking to get their flesh.

40 Acres attempts to stand out in an oversaturated genre by focusing on one of the kids and making it a coming-of-age story, though that in itself has also become a bit of a cliché. The Last of Us and 28 Years Later are two very recent examples of post-apocalyptic stories with a similar angle, though they were both overall much better executed. Still, the best thing 40 Acres has going for it is that it’s more an intimate story about a family and their farm than it is an apocalyptic story about the end of the world.

Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor) is the oldest son of the Freeman family. He feels trapped by the life his parents have chosen for him and his siblings. It’s a life of strict routines and hiding, where any outsider is considered an enemy that needs to be avoided. In other words, a life of loneliness. One day Emanuel sees an attractive young woman (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) at the lake and follows her for a bit before returning home. He listens to his family’s rules and doesn’t interact with her, but the moment still creates a yearning inside of him for a connection with others. When a couple of days later the same young woman arrives wounded in front of their gate, Emanuel invites her in against his parents’ orders, which might turn out to have been a mistake he will regret.

The most interesting part of 40 Acres is the family’s background: they are descendants of African American farmers on the mother’s side (Danielle Deadwyler, of The Woman in the Yard) and Indigenous on the father’s side (Michael Greyeyes, of Firestarter (2022)). And so this inevitably becomes a story about a white military group trying to violently take the land owned by a mixed Black-Indigenous family. I’m not sure writer/director R.T. Thorne really makes the most out of the obvious subtext that underlines every action of the movie, but it is certainly there, and that alone separates 40 Acres from the masses of post-apocalyptic thrillers.

Since the core family unit makes up the vast majority of the screen time, they really need to hold the audience’s attention. Thankfully the actors portraying them are able to step up and do exactly that. Danielle Deadwyler is the clear highlight of the movie, as she has been in most of her recent films, playing the matriarch of the family. She’s an ex-soldier with a cold demeanor who’s very hard on her children in an effort to toughen up her kids and prepare them for the world out there, and she kills it in a type of role often reserved for men. Michael Greyeyes does a great job counterbalancing her coldness with genuine warmth and humor, while Kataem O’Connor holds his own as an edgy kid that hates his parents and wants more from the world.

40 Acres presents its story in desaturated images that illustrate a lifeless and bitter world. Unfortunately, it also makes for mostly uninspiring visuals; much of the film devolves into mushes of grey and brown. The frankly bad lighting doesn’t help with the lack of contrast either. While Jeremy Benning’s cinematography is lacking for much of the film, he does a great job of capturing the gnarly violence that occurs once the movie gets into the action in its third act.

That pattern is rather indicative of the movie as a whole. While Danielle Deadwyler unsurprisingly delivers another powerhouse performance, and Kataem O’Connor manages to hold his own in front of her, the human drama often falls flat. There’s just not enough meat on the bones. The coming-of-age story at the heart and the message it leaves you with ultimately feel empty. When 40 Acres switches to action, it never disappoints. Too bad it’s largely a drama.

40 Acres will be released in US theatres on July 2, 2025.