Homestead Parent Guide

Ian Ross (Neal McDonough) is a farsighted man. Concerned about the government’s inability to respond to potential disasters, he and his wife, Jenna (Dawn Olivieri), have built a homestead “somewhere in the Rocky Mountains”. The lavishly appointed mansion sits in the midst of a plot of land maximized for survival with orchards, a vineyard, fish ponds, grain silos, and enough guns to fight a small military engagement.

Ross has also planned on defending his family’s fortress. He’s contracted Jeff Eriksson (Bailey Chase), a security expert and veteran, to come to the site and stabilize the situation in the gap between a disaster and the government’s ability to respond. And when Los Angeles is hit with a dirty bomb and the East Coast’s power grid is knocked offline in a cyberattack, Americans find themselves frightened, insecure, and hungry. As crowds flock to the property’s gates, the situation becomes increasingly tense. With Eriksson’s black-and-white, end-of-the-world look at the situation, and with lots of weaponry on hand, the inevitable happens soon enough…but in a way no one expects.

Homestead kicks off as expected for a prepper film that’s trying to tick all the right boxes – there’s mention of homeschooling, governmental incompetence, a bureaucrat who wants to seize guns, plus an implicit critique of electric cars (although solar panels are apparently fine). It’s a given that FEMA and other governmental agencies will never be adequate, so it’s everyone for himself in a dog-eat-dog world. That world involves plenty of tension, firearms violence, and an on-screen death that surprisingly lacks real world legal consequences. (But that’s about it for negative content, so the PG-13 rating is fair.)

I must say that, until the final act, this movie annoyed the living daylights out of me. I felt trapped in some kind of prepper fever dream, wallowing in paranoia and violence. Only when Jenna starts to ask more difficult questions does the story really get interesting. Jenna doesn’t simply address the daily challenges, but the bigger questions of being a Christian in a broken world. Is it the job of believers to hide in bunkers or to share what they have, inadequate though it may be, with others? Is the homestead an ark or is it a fortress? Is Christianity a faith of scarcity or one of mercy; one of fear or one of faith? Do Christians believe in the miracle of the loaves and fishes or not? These are foundational questions for Christians, and insofar as this film puts them in focus, it’s useful.

As I watched the movie, I also came up with questions for the studio: Do films like this serve the laudable goal of encouraging people to take sensible precautions for the natural disasters that are likely in their areas? Or are they more problematic, feeding distrust, paranoia, and lawlessness? I’m not sure the studio wants to engage with these queries: the post-credit cut scenes are promotional scenes for a series based on the film, so these questions are likely to be with us for the long haul.

About author

Kirsten Hawkes

Kirsten Hawkes has a BA in Political Science and English and has worked in international development and medical education and marketing. Kirsten enjoys reading, watching movies, and debating politics with her husband and sometimes unwilling children.