Movie Review: Thandiwe Newton is Exceptional in New Thriller 'God's Country'

God’s Country (2022)

Directed by Julian Higgins

Written by Julian Higgins, Shaye Ogbonna

Starring Thandiwe Newton

God’s Country stars Thandiwe Newton as Sandra, a College Professor living in the western mountain country. New to the area, Sandra has just lost her mother as we join the movie and in a moving, silent 10 minute opening sequence, we watch Sandra collect and spread her mother’s ashes before attempting to get on with her life. Looming around the edges of these opening minutes are an ominous red pick up truck.

Returning to work, Sandra brushes off the brief condolences of colleagues and sets about her work. Loneliness looms over Sandra as we return to her home on the first day following her mother’s cremation. The bed her mother likely spent the last months of her life in lays empty in the living room, a dark and ironic monument. The darkness of this mountain home is oppressive, lit mostly by the light of a fireplace. Only the comfort of a lovely dog brings any real warmth to the home.

That aforementioned red pick up truck becomes prominent the following morning as it stands parked in Sandra’s driveway. Upset at the intrusion, Sandra leaves a note for the owners and moves on to work. On the way home that same day, she finds a dead bird and her crumpled note as a visual warning not to bother the men who hunt on her land. In a lesser movie, this conflict would immediately become a violent, misogynist battle for survival, the tiny college professor versus the brutish hunters.

Thankfully, director Julian Higgins and co-writer Shaye Ogbanna have something more in mind. The film is based on a short story that initially had a white protagonist. In switching the gender and race of the protagonist, both Higgins and Ogbanna felt it necessary to acknowledge the inescapable aspects of the new protagonist, her race and gender, and the roles they play in how she is perceived, treated, and underestimated.

In altering the protagonist, they also decided to use a brand new back story that incorporates elements of experience specific to race. I don’t want to spoil anything about this very smart and well calculated film, but allusions to a past tragedy via Sandra’s backstory give the movie a depth and life it might have lacked if it had been centered on a more Liam Neeson-esque character. That film, you can imagine, would just be a clash of egos and masculinity. This take on the material is more thoughtful and while the thriller elements you are expecting do come into play, it’s not until after Thandiwe Newton has fleshed out the character of Sandra in fascinating ways.

The intersectional politics of God’s Country will undoubtedly be controversial for those who don’t like to think or be challenged while watching a movie. I love when a genre movie delivers more than just genre thrills and so I found this film extraordinarily compelling. The film takes on a number of challenging subjects and places them at the crossroads of our current cultural divide in unexpectedly challenging ways.

That challenge is aided greatly by the complex and haunting performance of Thandiwe Newton. Newton brings remarkable grace, passion, and fire to the performance. Even as she makes choices that you find dangerous or merely not the choice you would make, you can’t help but be moved by how the character of Sandra pushes the movie forward toward unique narrative places. It’s such a great performance that even if the movie had been a more traditional thriller, a less good movie, Newton’s performance would be enough to recommend the movie.

God’s Country opens in theaters nationwide on September 16th, 2022. If you'd like to read more of my reviews of movies starring Thandiwe Newton, among others, you can find my fully catalogue of 20 plus years of movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. You can also follow me on Twitter where my primary Twitter is @podcastsean and the archive twitter is @SeanattheMovies. You can also hear me talking movies every week on the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast.