It used to be zombies we were afraid of; now, rightwing secessionists are the big bad – zombies of a different order, you might say. They are the antagonists in this low-budget but well-performed survival drama from Canada, which posits escalating clashes between environmentalists and a neo-Nazi militia calling itself the United Conservancy (UC) that has formed a breakaway state somewhere along the north-eastern seaboard of North America. Ordinary citizens who just want to survive and don’t want to make America great again are compelled to huddle together in rural isolation.
It’s in one such cell that we meet sisters Nia (Jasmine Mathews) and Penny (Vinessa Antoine), who are living with a diverse assortment of other decent folk. In their cottage-core accommodation, the group live off homegrown and foraged food, and occasionally have spirit-lifting drink parties. But not long after Nia discovers she’s pregnant – her boyfriend Ethan (Douglas Smith) and she have been trying for ages and had given up hope of conceiving – they encounter some UC thugs in an abandoned town. Nia shoots one, sort of in self-defence and sort of because he’s clearly a racist bigot. Her act brings more UC militiamen to their home, and the whole cell has to fight or surrender, although they’re badly outgunned and surrendering is clearly no guarantee of safety.
Director Mackenzie Donaldson, who worked as a producer on cult Canadian sci-fi series Orphan Black, gets strong performances from her mostly little-known cast, especially Mathews, who has real star quality and range. The ancillary characters are fairly well limned with a few bits of business as Nia and Penny navigate a deadly obstacle course to freedom. The dramatic rhythms of tension/release, capture/escape do grow a little metronymic over the long haul. But in terms of politics, the film is at its best when drawing out how polarisation tears apart families as well as nations: the personal is always political.