If you were to Google “dystopian movies,” you’d find a list of hundreds of examples going back to the earliest years of film history. It’s the foundation of multiple major contemporary franchises (see The Hunger Games, Mad Max: Fury Road, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), and a clear crowd favorite formula for reformatting societal fears and anxieties into speculative human futures. There’s no denying that dystopia sells. The genre often mirrors current issues, but manages to present their consequences in distant extremes. This balance is the ideal register for entertainment–echoes of relevancy repackaged through the lens of a far-flung fiction.

Amidst this long-running interest with radical post-apocalyptic speculations of earth-scorched devastation, interplanetary relocation, and other extreme measures of dystopia, 40 Acres looms large in its refusal to extend the circumstances of its societal collapse beyond a plausible near future. Rather than relying on the spectacle of futuristic technology or landscapes drained of life beyond earthly recognition, R.T. Thorne provides an intimate, grounded vision of societal collapse just eleven years into the future. 

More interested in human behavior and simplifying the classic vision of dystopia, the film envisions a new version of the apocalypse altogether. It’s a debut that has the confidence to imagine a world where the slow unraveling of ecosystems has finally reached its breaking point. It’s not an alien invasion, nuclear disaster, or faux genetic mutation that topples society. It’s climate-driven scarcity that devastates societal order, disrupts food systems, and forces humanity into animalistic conflict over what remains: land.

At the center of this battle is Hailey Freeman, played with gripping precision and intensity by Danielle Deadwyler. Hailey is a former U.S. Army soldier turned fiercely protective matriarch, raising her family on a fortified, 40-acre farm passed down through generations and maintained in working order despite the surrounding societal catastrophe. Her performance is not just about the physical prowess she exerts, but also about the psychological toll of stabilizing, preparing, and protecting a family amidst a constant barrage of internal and external threats, knowing that a moment of weakness could cost them everything. The action that results from these threats is tense, propulsive, and kinetic. You can feel the weight and impact of every blow physically and emotionally. 

Thorne’s direction and Jeremy Benning’s cinematography capture a raw, tactile environment where every inch of land and functioning resource has been claimed, pillaged, and defended. The fences are electrified, the barns are reinforced, and the crops are guarded. The production design is exceptionally detailed in this quiet, practical lexicon of a life cobbled together from the remains of a defunct civilization. 

Excursions outside the property line are carefully curated to obtain specific material assets. Secret trade is the only functioning economic system. Bullets are scarce assets to preserve. The visual storytelling does the heavy lifting to translate this, and Thorne and crew are up to the task of constructing an authentic, lived-in reality. Questions about the state of society are answered visually in the decrepit infrastructure, the decaying mirage of governmental control, and the feral desperation of the cannibal marauders systematically in search of new flesh.

There are clear historical implications here: a Black-Indigenous landowning family facing infiltration from white invaders. Not to mention the historical implication of the film’s title as a truncation of the “40 acres and a mule” promise made during the Reconstruction era of America to newly freed African American slaves. The family’s land carries profound historical weight–it’s a tangible piece of the unfulfilled promise of reparations and a link to their ancestors’ resilience and struggle. Hailey is willing to die to protect it. But the trajectory of the story challenges us to consider what is lost when clinging to survival, and legacy is handled with such an unyielding grip.

This propels deeper questions about family, autonomy, and legacy. Much of the tension emerges not only from the raiders outside, but from within Hailey’s own home. Her son, Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor), is coming of age in this fortified prison, and he begins to question his mother’s relentless control over their lives. His fledgling relationship with Dawn (Milcania Diaz-Rojas), a girl from beyond their barricades, introduces a powerful wrinkle: can you truly survive if you cut yourself off from the world? And is that a life worth living?

40 Acres succeeds because it never feels like it’s preaching about climate change or social justice. It trusts the audience to see the parallels and recognize the foundational disparities at the core of our rotten society. This is climate fiction told through human stories. The film’s themes of environmental decomposition are embedded into the fabric of its world, making its warnings feel visceral rather than academic. 

This is a bold, gripping debut from R.T. Thorne and a commanding showcase for Danielle Deadwyler, who once again proves she’s one of the most magnetic talents working today. By utilizing the tried and true beats of the dystopian formula, but reformatting it with the vocabulary of Black history and a reverence for the land we occupy, we’re invited to reflect on a dystopian near future that we’re actively charging towards and to consider how close we may already be to a world where soil, not money, determines power.

Review Courtesy of Danny Jarabek

Feature Image Credit to Magnolia Pictures