‘40 Acres’
If there is one takeaway from this story of survival, it’s that if society ever spirals into complete chaos, you’d better be on Danielle Deadwyler’s side: Few actors can project such calm, determined authority while also suggesting that a heart beats underneath. In “40 Acres,” which takes place in a world wrecked by a fungal pandemic that wiped out most animals, followed by “a second Civil War” then famine, Deadwyler plays Hailey Freeman, the head of her family farm. She works the land, which is in Canada, with her First Nations partner, Galen (Michael Greyeyes), and their children. They are all well prepared to fight off the cannibalistic marauders who covet their property in an era of food scarcity. Yet those foes don’t get all that much screen time, though there is bloody action toward the end.
Rather, more of the focus is on the Freemans’ daily routines and the ethics by which they live — “40 Acres” shows its cards early, first with its title, of course, and then by dropping references to the radical-left “Proletarian’s Pocketbook” and Octavia E. Butler’s postapocalyptic novel “Parable of the Sower.” Admittedly the relationship between the Freemans’ son, Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor), and the mysterious Dawn (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) could have used less cheese in the sauce — the scene of her swimming in a river is particularly egregious — but overall the movie is a quietly effective portrayal of a family sticking together in a world gone mad.
‘Operation Undead’
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video or Plex.
In Khom Kongkiat Khomsiri’s imaginative, unpredictable film, Thai troops forge an alliance with their Japanese counterparts during World War II. This happened in real life, but here the sides join to defeat a common threat — zombies, of course. Those were created during a secret experiment by the Japanese, who wanted to gain the upper hand on the battlefield by cooking up a virus that would turn regular men into super-soldiers. It went horribly awry, as secret experiments are wont to do.
The first of several satisfying twists is that some of the infected retain a degree of self-control and can communicate, to the point that they can follow a leader. The movie is a lot more poignant than one might expect in such fare, especially as we follow the interlocked fates of the brothers Mek (Chanon Santinatornkul) and Mok (Awat Ratanapintha), and the new threat’s impact on a small Thai community. “Operation Undead” delivers on its genre premise with plenty of squishy, crunchy gore. But it also has a poetic, haunting quality, as some of the infected are horrified by what their newly developed instincts lead them to do. War is hell in the best of cases. This is not the best of cases.
‘Woken’
Stream it on Fandango at Home or Plex.
A pregnant young woman (Erin Kellyman) comes to, likely after a fall, and has no idea where or even who she is. The answer to the first question is: some kind of windswept island, edged by cliffs. As for her identity, her name is Anna. Or so she’s told by Helen (Maxine Peake), who is nursing her back to health in a cottage. Apparently, Anna has a husband, too, the attentive James (Ivanno Jeremiah). The director Alan Friel creates a slow-burn suspense out of uncertainty, because at first Anna learns what’s going on only from others.
One day, a horribly disfigured couple, growths protruding out of their faces, land on a nearby beach by paddle boat and ask Anna if they are on a safe island — then they get shot. After she’s informed that a highly contagious virus wiped out three quarters of the population, Anna regains a sense of agency and starts investigating what exactly is going on. Friel gives out information in a slow drip and Kellyman keeps emotions very close to the vest, both of which could frustrate viewers who’d prefer more demonstrative action. Still, it eventually makes a kind of crazy sense, especially as the fraught relationship between Anna and Helen deservedly takes center stage.
‘Motherland’
Rent or buy it on most major platforms.
Many speculative stories are concerned with the place of children in a dystopian society: Whether you can have them or not, how, or what happens to them once they’re born. In Evan Matthews’s film, babies are whisked away as soon as they are out of the womb, and raised by the state in grim institutions. The reasoning for such a takeover is, perversely, to foster equality by promoting equal access and eradicating disparities — the national motto is “Freedom from all for all, now and forever.” Fittingly, “Motherland” boasts classic Iron Curtain realness, with severe outfits and antiquated-looking computer terminals.
An administrator in a children’s center, Cora (Miriam Silverman) is perfectly fine enforcing the rules on behalf of her boss, Toni (Holland Taylor), until one day she spots a distinctive birthmark on Zinnia (Emily Arancio) and becomes convinced the girl is her long-relinquished daughter. This really messes up the way she considers the very system she works to enforce, along with her very identity: This is a world, after all, in which there are no mothers and fathers, but bearers and donors. Although the movie doesn’t tie up all the strands in a coherent narrative knot, it could spur spirited discussions among viewers about the maternal instinct, improving opportunities for women and how to best raise children.
‘Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox’
Anybody with a passing acquaintance with time travel — fine, with time-travel stories — know that it is rife with contradictions and seeming impossibilities that often loop in on themselves. In Stimson Snead’s dark comedy, those paradoxes are not a side effect but the entire point. Arrogant rogue scientist Tim Travers (Samuel Dunning) travels back by a minute, and when he re-emerges from the time machine he’s built, his present self shoots his past self dead. But wait, doesn’t that mean that he can’t exist at all? Oh, but he can. But isn’t he is alive and dead at the same time? Yes. Are there multiple versions of him or just one but from different timelines? My head! As the Tims multiply, so do the complications. Snead shows what you can do with a small budget and a big idea that you push to its outer limits. Adding some spice is Joel McHale, appropriately chewing the scenery as the conspiracy-minded blowhard host of a talk show called “The Rant.”
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