In the not so distant future, a catastrophic drought has ravaged the United States turning it into an arid dystopian wasteland. While citizens have migrated away from the most heavily affected and devastated areas, some of the more hard-bitten and prideful survivors have refused to leave their lands, clinging to barren plots and drying water wells in the hopes that rains will come again and replenish the parched landscape.

The hardened, shotgun-toting Ernest Holm (Michael Shannon) is one of these men. Resolute and stubborn, he protects his family—son Jerome (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and daughter Mary (Elle Fanning)—and water wells from invading bandits, and survives by trekking supplies to irrigation workers channeling the remaining water to tributaries of money and political influence. With resources precious, the cultural temperature is inhospitably dog eat dog. While severe on the outside, and battling demons from the past, Holm is also a charitable man, lending money and tools to the less fortunate (including Robbie, a local boy who begs on the streets for water, using his newborn child as manipulative bait).

However, the patriarch’s generosity doesn’t extend to Flem Lever (Nicholas Hoult, in his finest performance to date), a contemptuous young man, embittered by the fact that the government took part of his father’s lands and portioned them off to Holm when times were tough. Now with his own father struggling (or at least not as rich as they once were), Flem is obsessed with the land they lost rather than cultivating the territory they still own. Worse, Flem has eyes not only for the young and impressionable Mary, but seemingly Holm’s small kingdom as well. A showdown is all but inevitable. Continue reading  »