Description
After a series of plagues and wars leaves society in ruins, the Freemans are surviving—even thriving—on a farm in the middle of nowhere… so long as they repel the occasional raiding party. But what good is surviving the end of the world if it means snuffing out your own humanity?
Former soldier Hailey made that choice years ago, believing that isolation was the only way to protect her family. She and her partner Galen fled the collapse along with their children, training them to fight (and, yes, kill). But now Hailey’s eldest Emanuel is a young man, and when he meets a young woman in the forest beyond the fence, his need for human contact could place the whole family in jeopardy.
Writer-director R.T. Thorne infuses the dystopian narrative with contemporary relevance and an inescapable historical metaphor, placing Black and Indigenous characters at the center of a story about people defending their land from those who would kill them for it without a second thought.
Danielle Deadwyler is electric as the driven Hailey, whose refusal to consider even the slightest deviation from her shoot-first philosophy is rooted in the fear that she won’t be able to protect her people. And Michael Greyeyes finally gets a role that synthesizes his paradoxical strengths as a charismatic badass and deadpan comic player. But Toronto’s own Kataem O’Connor is the real discovery as Emanuel, a young man realizing that he might need to defy his family in order to save it.
—Norm Wilner, Toronto International Film Festival guide