“40 Acres” reminds us that the future belongs to those who remember where they came from.

Director R.T. Thorne makes an impressive jump from music videos and episodic television to features in 40 Acres from Magnolia Pictures. In the glutted ecosystem of the post-apocalyptic subgenre, 40 Acres plants its flag and forgoes spectacle and hype in favor of righteous indignation and ambient resilience. 

Danielle Deadwyler stars as Hailey Freeman, an ex-soldier and mother of two, who is fiercely determined to keep her children safe on their family farm, which has been in her family since the Reconstruction era. Deadwyler imbues the character of Hailey with a gravity that is both saintly and implacable, as she alternates between shouting orders at her children with drill-sergeant precision and providing the comforts of her Black Southern maternal wisdom: shooting practice between book reports, and farming before video games. As both the working class and Black Americans experience would have it, survival is their lived reality.

40 Acres is refreshingly muted in its staging of themes; if the action and visual splendor of genre fare are like fire, then 40 Acres is embers crackling in the darkness. There's a deliberate stillness to the way this family mourns, grieves, and even flourishes, whether it's tending to their farm, defending themselves and their property, or connecting with the legacy of their ancestors who farmed the same land. In this way, the horror and splendor of their situation are conveyed through the tone of their world-building, which possesses an intimate texture and a hazy palette that more than compensates for its intimate setting and ambition.

A barely there script only hints at the more profound allegories the film weaves around race, climate justice, and gender roles without ever condescending or overstating its case. After all, the real monsters are both the things we don't see and the real-world environmental and societal devolutions that rendered a world like this one possible in the first place. 

It would be too easy to splay out a metaphor as old as its premise requires. Instead, the film's strength lies in its ability to, against all odds, actually frighten, thrilling with a depth of character and a familiarity with class and race that films of this type usually lack. Ford never puts a wrong foot forward, despite the fairly formidable feat of balancing the simmering threats with the daily work of just staying alive.

It may get bogged down a little in exposition in its third act, but 40 Acres is one of the most invigorating speculative dramas to come along in some time, leaning less on The Road and more on the DNA of Daughters of the Dust through Children of Men.

Final Grade: B+

40 Acres opens in theaters today.