40 Acres

Brian Eggert — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:48:11 +0000

Listen to the audio version of this review. 40 Acres is another in a long line of post-apocalyptic yarns about survivalists who contend with raiders and cannibals—not to mention their strained family dynamics. The movie combines the sensibilities of an austere drama such as The Road (2009), where a parent will do anything to ensure their child survives, with the coming-of-age trappings of a YA equivalent, where the young protagonist feels compelled to question his world (think The Maze Runner series), including his parents. However oversaturated the story may be with familiar ideas, the movie’s title hints that there’s something more on Canadian director R.T. Thorne’s mind than another formulaic genre exercise. 40 Acres alludes to how, after the Civil War in the United States, the government under Abraham Lincoln vowed to give thousands of formerly enslaved Black families forty acres of farmland and a mule. But Lincoln’s assassination gave way to President Andrew Johnson, who reversed the decision in just one of the many broken promises made to Black communities during the postwar Reconstruction era. Thorne wrote 40 Acres alongside Glenn Taylor, and they weave a shared history by centering on the Freemans, a family whose militarized matriarch, Hailey […]

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40 Acres