40 Acres

40 Acres left me with more to think about than I expected. It isn’t just telling a survival story and then calling it a day. There’s a lot underneath it about race, history, land and what people inherit from the generations before them.

The atmosphere was the thing that pulled me in first. Even when nothing massive is happening, there’s this feeling that something isn’t right. You’re watching the characters, trying to work out what they know, what they’re hiding and where things are going. I liked that the film was happy to let that tension sit there instead of throwing something at you every few minutes.

It also gets uncomfortable in places, which I think it needs to. A film dealing with subjects like this could easily turn into two hours of somebody basically explaining the message to you. This doesn’t really do that. The ideas are there, but you still have an actual story to follow and people you care about.

There are a few moments where I thought it might go even further with some of those ideas, but maybe that would have made it too heavy-handed. As it is, there’s enough there that I was still thinking about parts of it afterwards.

I liked the way it looks too. It has its own identity and doesn’t feel like a generic thriller where you could swap the location out, and nothing would change. The land matters to the story, which makes all the stuff around ownership and history hit harder.

I don’t think this is the sort of film you watch, say “that was decent” and instantly forget about. There’s more going on than that. It gives you a tense story first, then leaves all the bigger questions hanging around afterwards.

If you like thrillers that actually have something behind them, 40 Acres is worth a look. It isn’t perfect, but it definitely stuck with me.