December 21, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Ben Smallbone
Some language in Tagalog with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in California and Utah, the dramatic film “Homestead” (based on the 2018 novel “Black Autumn: A Post Apocalyptic Saga”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people, Asians and Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: After a nuclear bomb is detonated off the coast of California, a wealthy doomsday prepper with a survivalist fortress in Utah’s Rocky Mountains fights off military soldiers, government officials and refugees who want to gain access to the fortress.
Culture Audience: “Homestead” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and faith-based entertainment, no matter how poorly made this entertainment is.
The only thing worse than “Homestead” is knowing that this terribly made apocalyptic movie with faith-based preaching is really just a pilot episode for an online series that will continue the atrociousness. This rotten drama is filled with more plot holes than any destruction caused by the nuclear bomb that sets off this catastrophic story. In addition to the flimsy and disjointed plot, much of the acting in the film is either stiff are horribly melodramatic.
Directed by Ben Smallbone and written by Jason Ross, “Homestead” is based on the 2018 novel “Black Autumn: A Post Apocalyptic Saga,” which was written by Jeff Kirkham and Ross. “Black Autumn” turned into a series of books, which will no doubt be the basis of the “Homestead” series that will be available on platforms that carry series from Angel Studios. The end of “Homestead” shows a montage of “sneak preview” scenes from the series.
“Homestead” starts off with a nonsensical scene showing who had the bomb and how the bomb was denotated. The movie goes downhill from there. Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, near the California coast, two Filipino brothers named Ajay (played by Iñigo Pascual) and Miguel (played by Mark LaBella) are in a small, ramshackle fishing boat when they are told to halt what they’re doing by people in a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter that’s hovering above them.
The brothers speak in Tagalog. Miguel, the older brother, tells Ajay to set off the nuclear bomb that’s in their boat. Why? Don’t expect an answer to that question. And don’t expect the movie to explain how Miguel and Ajay came into possession of this nuclear bomb on their raggedy boat.
The only clues are that Miguel and Ajay were headed to Queensgate before they got caught and they took some kind of “oath” to complete this mission. Instead of surrendering, Ajay sets off the bomb on the boat. (The suicide bomber deaths of Miguel and Ajay are not shown in the movie but are presumed.) The bomb is small and looks as dirty and rickety as the boat.
“Homestead” next switches to scenes that takes place in California. A woman, who is later identified as Jenna Ross (played Dawn Olivieri), can be heard saying in a voiceover: “Everyone wondered how the world broke. Deep down before the collapse, we were already falling. Technology had become our god. And we worshipped at the altar of convenience and ease. Everyone wondered how the world ended. But this is the story of how it began. Again.”
“Homestead” is really a sloppily constructed parable that’s supposed to draw parallels to Noah’s Ark and the modern-day survivalist homestead that is the story’s namesake. It takes an awfully long time (and several mindless scenes of gun shootings) before the movie makes these comparisons. Until then, “Homestead” is just a series of disjointed scenes that jump from one badly written scenario to the next. The nuclear bomb affects the Los Angeles area the most, but the movie inexplicably also makes references to an apocalypse happening in many other parts of Earth.
The first family who’s shown being affected by the nuclear bomb lives in Calabasas, California. When the bomb goes off, the air suddenly turns light orange. It’s mentioned several times that people aren’t supposed to breathe the poisonous air, but in the panic of people finding refuge, people breath the air anyway. But then, later that same day, the sky turns clear, and the movie never mentions any side effects of breathing the poisonous air, as if the sky never turned orange from this nuclear explosion.
“Homestead” does a terrible and incoherent job of introducing the families who are the focus of the story: The Ross family, the Ericksson family and the McNulty family. All of the women in the families are “saintly mothers,” while all the men in the families are flawed but “brave protectors.” The McNulty family, who’s shown in the first 20 minutes of movie, isn’t even one of the two main families who are at the center of the story. All of the families have at least one member who acts unrealistically during this crisis.
The McNulty family from Calabasas is the first family shown in the movie. Malcolm McNulty (played by Matt Koenig), who works in an unnamed business, is in his high-rise office building when the bomb goes off. Malcolm frantically calls his homemaker wife Evie McNulty (played by Susan Misner) and tells her to take their three underage kids and “go to the homestead,” where he plans to meet up with them as soon as he can.
The couple’s three children are Molly McNulty (played by Grace Powell), who’s about 14 or 15; Theo McNulty (played by Caden Dragomer), who’s about 11 or 12; and Emma McNulty (played by Sophia Kopera), who’s about 7 or 8 years old. There are some scenes where Emma and the kids are at a supermarket, where people are panic-buying and getting into fights in a parking lot. Emma ends up stealing a man’s car at a gas station when her car doesn’t work anymore. Malcolm is separated from his family for most of the movie.
The Ross family is the owner of the survivalist homestead in the Rocky Mountains of Utah, the state where most of “Homestead” was filmed on location. The McNulty family is related to the Ross family because Evie McNulty is the sister of Jenna Ross, the Ross family matriarch. Jenna is married to wealthy tycoon Ian Ross (played by Neal McDonough), a prickly ex-military guy who’s a doomsday prepper. Ian and Jenna have a 17-year-old daughter named Claire (played by Olivia Sanabia), who has been homeschooled her entire life. There’s a scene early in the movie where Claire worries that no one will ask her to go to an upcoming prom because she’s a homeschooled kid.
Claire has a good relationship with her mother Jenna, but she doesn’t really get along well with her strict and domineering father Ian. In the event of an apocalypse, Ian has already planned who will and who will not get access to his survivalist homestead, which is a sprawling and remote compound with its own farmland in this mountainous area. Ian’s selectiveness in who will have access to the homestead becomes a source of conflict between Jenna and Ian. Jenna thinks Ian should be more welcoming and inclusive to friends and strangers who are desperately in need during this apocalypse.
The Eriksson family is part of the story because patriarch Jeff Ericksson (played Bailey Chase) is a former Green Beret, who is contacted by Ian in this crisis to become the homestead’s head of security. Conversations in the movie indicate that Jeff and Ian used to be buddies in the military. Jeff’s wife Tara Ericksson (played by Kearran Giovanni) is a veteran of the U.S. Army.
Jeff and Tara have a blended family where the spouses are raising Tara’s two biological sons from a previous relationship: 17-year-old Abe Ericksson (played by Tyler Lofton) and Leif Eriksson (played by Isaiah Dolan), who’s about 11 or 12, have both been adopted by Jeff. Tara and Jeff also have an adopted teenage daughter named Georgie Ericksson (played by Georgiana White), who apparently has psychic abilities. There are hokey scenes in the movie showing that Georgie predicted this apocalypse by drawing illustrations of it.
Jeff, Tara, and their children go to live in the homestead compound. Jeff has also brought along seven ex-military men to be the compound’s security employees. Predictably, there’s at least one trigger-happy hothead in the group. His name is Bing (played by Manny McCord), and you can easily predict his fate in this story. Also predictably, alpha males Ian and Jeff clash over certain issues regarding the compound, which has about 40 families livng there when Jeff and his family arrive.
“Homestead” is sloppy with details over who exactly planned this nuclear bomb attack. Jeff does some vague shouting early in the story: “The Russians took the power grid out!” But that’s the very limited extent to which any entity or group is identified as responsible for planning this terrorist attack.
“Homestead” is a clumsy mix of aggressive gun shootouts, sanctimonious religious preaching and angry anti-bureaucrat messaging. One of the chief villains to Ian is Blake Masterson (played by Currie Graham), the zoning enforcement chief from Oakwood, the fictional community where the compound is located. In the midst of this apocalypse, where people are trying to survive on limited resources, Blake storms over to the compond and threatens Ian with fines because Blake has gotten complaints that Ian has too many people on Ian’s property. Yes, the movie really is that stupid.
The food shortage problem for the compound is awkwardly addressed in a way that seems inspired by the Christian story of Jesus feeding 5,000 people with only five loaves of bread and two fish. The movie also drops in a random tidbit about Claire: She’s skilled at making peach wine, which she proudly shows to Abe, who has an instant crush on her.
Speaking of Claire and Abe, “Homestead” has a corny subplot about a blossoming romance between these two teenagers. Because “Homestead” is a movie with a conservative Christian perspective, the romance between Claire and Abe is very chaste, with only wholesome kisses. And the romance literally blossoms, since Claire and Abe have secretive “dates” in a greenhouse. Claire and Abe’s “romance” is taboo because their fathers are having conflicts with each other.
The movie’s uneven acting—none of which can be considered “good”—is only made worse by the onslaught of bad ideas on display. “Homestead” can’t seem to make up its mind if it wants to be a movie that preaches peace and harmony, or if it wants to be a doomsday “survival of the fittest” battle movie. This erratic tone in “Homestead” makes it a wretched slog, as the movie repeatedly pounds out messages that the end is only the beginning. When the end of the movie finally arrives, viewers will definitely know whether or not “Homestead” is worth revisiting.
Angel Studios released “Homestead” in U.S. cinemas on December 20, 2024.
