Episode 710: In The Seats With.... R.T. Thorne and '40 Acres'

In The Seats with...

It's nice to see genre cinema executed with real layers to it....
On this episode we get to deal with some Canadian cinema getting love and co-funding south of the border. It's time for '40 Acres'.
After a plague eradicates all animal life, famine spreads across the globe leaving society at war and in ruins, but the Freemans are surviving — even thriving — on their ancestral farm so long as they dispatch 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 (Danielle Deadwyler) made that choice years ago, believing that isolation was the only way to protect her family. She and her partner Galen (Michael Greyeyes) fled the collapse along with their children, fenced them off from the world and trained them to fight (and, yes, kill). But now Hailey’s eldest Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor) is a young man, and when he meets a young woman (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) in the forest beyond the fence, his need for human contact could place the whole family in jeopardy.
'40 Acres' takes the best of the likes of Carpenter and Romero and sprinkles in some genuine cultural and societal relevance in this familiar yet wholly original yarn. R.T. Thorne has laid his claim to being a self-assured filmmaker that isn't afraid to combine the best of all worlds to give audiences something both entertaining and intellectually engaging.
We had the unique pleasure of sitting down co-writer/director R.T. Thorne about so many of elements at play in this film, the freedom allowed in genre cinema, working with Danielle Deadwyler and about being a storyteller that isn't afraid to spark conversation and entertain, all at the same time.
'40 Acres' is in theatres now