By John Corrado

40 Acres is a pretty solid Canadian post-apocalyptic survival thriller that imagines a dystopic future where, as the opening title card tells us, a global pandemic led to a second Civil War breaking out and subsequent worldwide famine.

This has caused farmland to become the planet’s most valuable resource, with families struggling to survive on dwindling resources, and defend their land from violent militia groups trying to take it over.

Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler), a descendant of African-American slaves who settled in Canada after the first Civil War, is the matriarch of one such family. Hailey lives on a rural farm with her Indigenous partner Galen (Michael Greyeyes) and four kids, who have all been trained to guard the place like a fortress.

As such, intruders are instructed to be shot on site. This is established in the film’s visceral opening sequence; a tense shootout involving a group of trespassers getting picked off by the family, who are kept offscreen at first. Hailey has become hardened by her circumstances and familial history, which is why she is so focused on her own family’s survival above all else.

But this harsh, survivalist worldview leads to some friction with her teenaged son Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor). He begins to question why they won’t hire outside helpers to work on their farm, or share extra food from their harvest with other families, instead of ceremoniously burning the rotted corn that never got picked. The plot is set in motion when Emanuel defies the family rule of not helping anyone, and secretly rescues Dawn (Milcania Diaz-Rojas), a girl he encounters.

The film serves as the feature debut of Canadian director R. T. Thorne, who is best known for his TV work, and now makes a surprisingly good leap to the big screen. If the story itself features some recognizable beats of the post-apocalyptic genre, the screenplay that Thorne co-wrote with Glenn Taylor also has deeper ideas behind it (the title is obviously a reference to the idea of “forty acres and a mule” as a form of reparations for former slaves).

It’s well-crafted by Thorne, who does a fine job establishing this world. He stages moments of bleak violence, while keeping the story rooted in the relationships between these characters. Deadwyler’s steely portrayal of Hailey helps ground the film, while relative newcomer O’Connor holds his own alongside her. Finally, the widescreen cinematography by Jeremy Benning turns the Northern Ontario farm where it was shot into a desolate, post-apocalyptic death trap.

Film Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)

40 Acres opens exclusively in theatres in limited release on July 4th. It’s being distributed in Canada by Mongrel Media.