HOMESTEAD
(director: Ben Smallbone; screenwriters: Philip Abraham, Leah Bateman, Jack Ross, based on the novel series Black Autumn by Jeff Kirkham & Jason Ross; cinematographer: Matthew Rivera; editor: John Puckett; music: Benjamin Backus; cast: Dawn Oliviera (Jenna Ross), Bailey Chase (Jeff Eriksson), Neal McDonough (Jason Ross), Tyler Lofton (Abe), Kearran Giovanni (Tara Eriksson), Olivia Sanabia (Claire Ross), Susan Misner (Evie McNulty), Currie Graham (Blake Masterson), Jesse Hutch (Evan Lee), Kevin Lawson (Tick), Caden Dragomer (Theo McNulty), Georgiana White (Georgie Ross); Runtime: 110; MPAA Rating: PG-13; producers: Andrea Royer, Ben Smallbone; Angel Studios; 2024)
“You can bet your long rifles that the good guys in this flick walk around with MAGA baseball hats.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Aussie director Ben Smallbone (“Priceless”) is the brother of Joel and Luke Smallbone, a.k.a the Christian rock band for King & Country. Smallbone and writers Philip Abraham, Leah Bateman, and Jack Ross, base their contrived faith-based doomsday family survival story on the best-selling novel series Black Autumn by Jeff Kirkham & Jason Ross. The film is a misfire. It was meant as a pilot driven movie for a TV streaming series.
The drama takes place in California and Utah after a Russian nuclear bomb detonates off the California coast and knocks out the country’s power grid. In Utah’s Rocky Mountains there’s a vast fictional fortress called the Homestead, owned by the billionaire Ian Ross (Neal McDonough). He and his religious wife Jenna (Dawn Oliviera), and a number of security people plus numerous connected families take shelter there from the nuclear attacks. They are soon joined by the tough ex-Green Beret, Jeff Eriksson (Bailey Chase), who brings to the fortress his guns, his wife Tara (Kearran Giovanni) and teenage son Abe (Tyler Lofton). The kid accidentally kills a civilian hunter while on border patrol in the area. The Eriksson’s also bring along the possibly psychic but abused adopted young son Georgie (Georgiana White).
When hungry soldiers, government workers and refugees try to get into the fortress for shelter and food, they are repelled by the survivalists, who wish to preserve their food supply and safe haven. The devout Christian Jenna’s appeal to her reluctant husband to let them have some food goes unanswered.
The film has too many undeveloped characters, the acting is mediocre, the screenplay is uninspiredt, and there’s an inability to deal rationally with its raised morality questions (as the filmmaker eventually sides with nationalism over Christian values). It also includes a ridiculous and ponderous romance between Abe and Ian’s home-schooled teenage daughter Claire (Olivia Sanabia).
There are too many subplots that go nowhere, The promotional film dies a slow death in executing its weakly told doomsday survival story. It tosses out Christian compassion as if it were a home-made bomb about to explode in their hands. It concludes on a bad note when the clueless city bureaucrat (Currie Graham), obviously a liberal Democrat, asks those at the Homestead for permits and threatens to return with a military force for a showdown if he doesn’t get the proper woke answers.
In this faith-based film, it seems you can only get the truth on right-wing talk radio, that you don’t have anything to worry about even if nuked if you drive a Tesla, and you can’t go wrong using Bit coin as your currency.
You can bet your long rifles that the good guys in this flick probably walk around with MAGA baseball hats (even if the film doesn’t show that).
REVIEWED ON 12/29/2024 GRADE: C-
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