Fleeing to the Mountains
In the wake of a nuclear attack on Los Angeles, families flee to the home of doomsday prepper Ian Ross, safely ensconced in the Rocky Mountains. Under Ian’s and his wife Jenna’s careful management, the survivors can grow their own food, create their own power, and protect themselves with copious amounts of guns.
But as starving refugees start to camp outside the gates, questions accumulate. Who should be let in and who should be kept out? Torn by the desire to help, Jenna asks the money question: “Is this an ark or a fortress?”
Complicating matters is Jeff, a former Green Beret, invited to head the compound’s security team. Jeff has already seen chaos on foreign soil. As encounters with trespassers, arsonists, and eventually the police, escalate, Jeff is ready to protect the oasis of Homestead at all costs.
With the world melting down around them, Ian and his family are left to decide how much their safety is really worth—weighed against the lives of the people standing on the other side of the fence.
A Different Kind of Apocalypse
In some ways, Homestead is Angel Studios’ answer to this year’s Civil War, which grossed $126,185,957 at box offices worldwide. Civil War portrays the United States drawn into the same kind of bloody, genocidal conflict often seen elsewhere in the world. In the words of one critic, “the film isn’t very deep, but it does paint the grimmest picture possible of a divided nation with bodies bodies bodies [sic] everywhere.”
Homestead isn’t afraid to consider the stakes of a country-wide meltdown. Unlike Civil War, however, it offers a way out. Without dumbing down the risks—by Ian’s calculation there really isn’t enough food to see everyone safely into a new year—the film is willing to ask what role faith might play in a post-apocalyptic America.
After Jeff’s son Abe shoots and kills a hunter, for example, he is tortured by guilt. Desperate for solace, he finds it in his relationship with Ian’s daughter Claire, who extends a simple offer: “Can I pray for you?” On the heels of a bumbling prayer, Abe begins to feel the reality that God is still there, despite his life-altering mistake.
At that moment, Homestead dares to address the real heart of the issue: human nature, and what we do about it. It isn’t so much what happens that’s the problem, but how we respond to it. Will we choose faith and the ability to love our neighbor despite the risks, or will we give in to fear? As Jenna narrates, “We all held the shovel that buried that first man.”
Frenemy at the Gates
Meanwhile, the refugees at the front gate evoke the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, who only “desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table” (Luke 16:19-31). In the end, it is an act of faith that leads Jenna to open the gates and let everyone in. To some, Jenna’s rationale might sound cliché—“My God is bigger than the math.” However, for Christians, there’s a real lesson to be drawn here.
First of all, it turns out that those on the outside have skills the group needs. The outside kids jump in, cultivating sweet potatoes that multiply quickly. Rick, who has been outside Ian’s gate for weeks, installs fireplaces in the greenhouses, keeping them functioning year-round.
This flies in the face of a popular environmentalist trope that people are always the problem, never the solution. That line of thinking was popularized by authors like Paul Ehrlich, whose book disastrously (and erroneously) predicted that overpopulation would cause global catastrophe within a few decades. Eherlich’s thesis contributed to a wave of anti-populist crusades that were at times seized on by totalitarian governments (for example, China’s one child policy.)
People are not parasites but the world’s rightful stewards, something Homestead seems to understand well
Yet, just as humans can create catastrophe, it is image-bearers who are also empowered to restore creation. People are not parasites but the world’s rightful stewards, something Homestead seems to understand well. All the protagonists, including the soldiers, are eventually drafted into the task of gardening. The implication is clear: When we reconcile our relationship with God and each other, it’s amazing to see peace with creation unfold as well.
More than anything, it is the community’s trust in God that enables them to break the stalemate and love their neighbors instead of abandoning them. The film ends with the group still praying for a miracle but on much firmer footing. They have chosen to be an ark, not just a fortress.
Asking the Right Questions
It’s worth noting that Homestead draws from a worldview that is not just theistic, but specifically Mormon. Founded by brothers Neal, Jeffery, and Daniel Harmon, Angel Studios has never hidden its LDS roots. Mormons are taught by their doctrine of the end times, for example, to stockpile resources, and to be ready to share with those in need—something the filmmakers take full advantage of with a promotional survival-gear-giveaway. Arguably, this Mormon worldview also makes sense of the setting (somewhere in the Rocky Mountains), the farm’s communal aspect, and its skepticism about established governments. As LDS founder Joseph Smith famously wrote after clashing with authorities in Missouri, “Who is so big a fool as to cry, ‘The law! The law!’ when it is always administered against us and never in our favor?”
Yet we don’t have to agree with every worldview premise to appreciate the truths in a film like Homestead. Followers of Jesus, after all, have a rich legacy of action when civilization gets wobbly in the knees. After the Roman Empire collapsed, it was Christians who preserved literacy and re-converted Europe. When the plague struck centuries later, those like St. Catherine of Siena stayed behind to care for the sick. When floods, hurricanes, and fires devastate communities today, Christian aid groups are often the first to respond.
Followers of Jesus, after all, have a rich legacy of action when civilization gets wobbly in the knees
If Christians wake up someday to a Homestead-style apocalypse in our own time, we will face a decision faced many times in world history: the choice between selflessness and survival. How we act depends on where our hope is. Soup kitchens and country clubs, by analogy, both serve food but are designed for radically different purposes. The question is, “What are Christians made for?”
That might be Homestead’s biggest takeaway. If civilization collapses, it could spell the end of everything. Or, as has happened many times in the past, we can trust God and step into the breach—unleashing faith, hope, and love where they matter the most.