A nuclear bomb hitting Los Angeles at the outset of the film “Homestead” seems its most minor concern. Mostly, it’s a pretext for finally getting to use those go-bags that all good doomsday preppers have had ready for years to flee to the hinterlands after hints of societal collapse.
And maybe it’s a metaphor too, for the film’s producing Angel Studios — blowing up Hollywood and aiming instead for the rural expanses of the middle of the country, using way different funding and distribution ideas in order to keep the films in the black financially (and in the deep red politically).
In “Homestead,” one L.A. family heads to the mountains hundreds of miles away to avoid the literal fallout and attendant chaos. There, a wealthy landowner atop a mountain played by Neal McDonough, has been preparing for such an event for years, calling in a military-mad security squad led by an ex-Green Beret (Bailey Chase) to keep others from traversing their iron fences.
“Everybody’s going to want in,” he advises his employer. “And I mean everyone.”
Already society is breaking down — the line for EV charging is long so a family we’re following simply steals someone else’s vehicle.
And when neighbors want to come in to the compound, offering to chip in, they are told, “I love you, but you install fireplaces.”
As with “The Walking Dead” or “The Last of Us,” what began as one kind of global horror story quickly turns to very specific kind of drama — the cat-and-mouse skirmishes among survivors over what remains.
And while those examples are both TV shows, “Homestead” is a weirder hybrid — a movie in theaters, but also a streaming series with its own episodes (on the studio’s own streaming service, Angel.com).
Based on “Black Autumn,” a 10-volume post-apocalyptic series of books by Jeff Kirkham and Jason Ross, there’s apparently plenty of plot go base it on.
But the film has other things that remind you of a series, including spending a lot of time establishing characters sure to return as allies or foes, and pretty much a cliffhanger at the end identifying the next battle.
In this case, it’s local law enforcement who understandably want to look into the massive arsenal the rich prepper has built. So in the spirit of Ruby Ridge, the government is the bad guy in a film that mentions the Federal Emergency Management Agency as if it’s universally understood that FEMA must be the enemy.
It’s a dangerous thing to casually establish, but not a surprising one coming from producers who are connected with creating the gun-toting conservative Black Rifle Coffee Company.
Angel Studios is nominally known for its overtly Christian themes, but here the praying doesn’t happen until late. And the one measure of charity comes when the matriarch of the mountain (Dawn Olivieri) decides to bake bread and otherwise welcome in the neighbors that had previously been locked out.
It may be the right thing to do, but tonally, it clashes with just about everything that went before it.
And there’s a narrative that goes so many directions, few of the threads are resolved, from a kid who may have prognostication skills and predicted the nuclear blast, though not much is done with that, to a blossoming teen romance that never quite gets there.
And if the advertising for the “Homestead” series at the end isn’t off-putting enough, you get the idea that many of the threads would be resolved, or allowed to play on, should one pony up for the streaming service. (The other Angel Studios ploy is to ask audiences to give more dough at the end — though a QR code — to allow others to see the film, which always seems like a transparent money grab).
Ben Smallwood’s direction and the majestic mountain scenery captured by cinematographer Matthew Rivera, make it a lot of it a pleasant enough moviegoing experience when it isn’t going the wrong direction.
Its underlying fight-the-government notions and arsenal building give the film a lot of Jan. 6 energy, but with the results of last month’s election, it may inadvertently give the producers’ political opposites their own Fight the Power bolstering.
“Homestead” the movie is in theaters; “Homestead” the series is on the Angel.com streaming service.