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Even if you stopped watching The Walking Dead back in 2016, it probably doesn’t feel like it. Director R. T. Thorne’s post-apocalyptic debut 40 Acres is similar to everything else that’s come in the wake of AMC’s never-ending zombie franchise. It’s fringe horror, only dipping its toes into its world’s doomsday conditions. Thorne uses this world to explore the familial, preservation-first dynamics of survivors as seen in 28 Years Later, The Last Of Us, Lazareth, Didn’t Die—all properties rattled off from recent memory. 40 Acres‘ paranoid storytelling just never finds a unique take on dystopia.
“It’s been 14 years since a fungal pandemic decimated 98% of the animal biosphere,” the opening text crawl reads. “12 years since a second Civil War broke out as a result of global food chain collapse,” yadda yadda. An outbreak spreads unchallenged, and warfare has torn America apart—but audiences don’t witness anything. 40 Acres is instead about “The Freemans,” a small group who protect their farmland with their lives. Danielle Deadwyler stars as Hailey Freeman, the matriarch of this little militia on the prairie. The rules are simple: Protect one another, kill any trespassers, and trust no one. At least, that’s what Hailey insists.
40 Acres establishes an ominous aesthetic that has you waiting for a vile turn. Hailey lives by an NFL defensive lineman’s code: “We must protect this house.” You know something terrible’s eventually going to come knocking, yet Thorne and co-writer Glenn Taylor keep things drearily mundane. Locationally, 40 Acres feels related to A Quiet Place, Arcadian, and It Comes At Night—any isolated household that fears outside interference—but it doesn’t have the excitable anxiety of its peers. Despite mentions of destructive fungi and home turf battlegrounds, 40 Acres fails to show off any extremes for its nearly two-hour runtime.
More important than the conditions, though, 40 Acres is about Hailey’s interactions with those she holds dearest. Like so many other post-apocalyptic stories, Thorne tests the boundaries of togetherness as civilization breaks down. In a world where there’s safety in numbers, Hailey refuses to let even allies past her electric fences, fearing treachery. Kataem O’Connor rebels as Emanuel “Manny” Freeman, who keeps his mother’s closed-off instincts accountable. Hailey’s wish to remain walled off conflicts with Manny’s desire to meet cute girls at other camps (like Milcania Diaz-Rojas’ Dawn) or to fortify their ranks with new friends. It’s an age-old compound conundrum that’s typically solved when the hardened introvert has no choice but to accept the help of others—unsurprisingly, something in-line with what happens here.
40 Acres doesn’t want to be a horror movie, instead positioning Deadwyler as an action star. Hailey’s enemies are human; she’s proficient in gunfights and hand-to-hand combat. The same holds true for Michael Greyeyes, who stars as Galen, the patriarchal figure of the Freeman outpost. Thorne’s experience as a music video director trickles down into cinematographer Jeremy Benning’s frenetic fight scenes, where Deadwyler delivers justice without mercy. The film’s third act morphs into a siege movie as Hailey and Galen stand their ground against an antagonistic squad of cannibals who’ve gnawed through neighboring farms—which is, finally, where the excitement has been hiding.
The problem is that 40 Acres simply sprinkles its few unique ideas atop a shambling post-apocalyptic template. There’s chatter of Union soldiers called in as backup, but the “Civil War” tease is hardly utilized as social commentary. There’s no leftover pandemic frights, merely a scarcity of resources. Thorne’s script spends its time answering harder-hitting questions, like how or where a hormonal boy pleasures himself without Wi-Fi, or how many punches to the face should your children land while sparring before dinner? Sure, it’s funny to see Galen chastise the youngsters for using sauce packets that are only still edible thanks to being full of processed garbage, but the barebones “humans are the real monsters” angle is worn out. Thorne is rehashing old end-of-days conversations with contemporary needledrops and bullets to the head, but it’s not enough to distract from the monotonous inevitability that kneecaps the film’s impact.
40 Acres just doesn’t separate itself from a pack of post-apocalyptic survival scenarios that all hunt, gather, and defend like the rest. There are no monsters here beyond the maniacs who’d turn evil once there’s no governance over morality. Deadwyler and company at least have their mettle tested in action, which finally gets your pulse going as bodies start hitting the floor. But the injection of dead baddies is too little and too late for this uninspired iteration on a familiar template.
Director: R. T. Thorne
Writers: R. T. Thorne, Glenn Taylor
Starring: Danielle Deadwyler, Kataem O’Connor, Michael Greyeyes, Milcania Diaz-Rojas, Leenah Robinson
Release Date: July 2, 2025
