There are two kinds of reviews for this movie.

A. Unearned, glowing reviews clearly written by friends, family, or maybe even AI.

B. Rants written by those that paid to watch the movie and were disappointed.

I saw this on STARZ during a free preview, so here's my 100% unbiased opinion:

Anyone that watches tons of film, especially horror, or knows anything about making them will see how obvious it is that this outcome is a production issue not a creative one. The acting (by *almost* all) was decent to great. I wouldn't say excellent for anyone, but Lula and the girl from CBS's Equalizer really tried. She's the only actor I recognize and, based on her age here, I'd say this movie was filmed at least 4-5 years ago. My theory is that it got abandoned for awhile (due to covid??) and was edited by a couple of uninvested freelancers when it was picked back up again. On top of that, someone told them to turn a 2+ hr character-centered horror into a 90m trope-reliant horror, and that never should have happened.

Every single scene was cut to BITS, leading the movie to look like the writing was incoherent. The first scene where this was obvious was when the neighbor and his son were hunting. They appeared out of nowhere, complaining about things that never happened. I immediately knew at least 3 mins were missing from there.

Throughout the movie, I had so many questions about why there was no character development happening, but the minute the family would start bringing something up, the scene would cut to the next. The movie cut so fast from scene to scene that it gave me a stress headache. The poor redhead sister clearly had some importance to the final scenes, but was almost completely removed from the movie.

Let's not even get on the mist...whoever did the cgi for this film, did them dirty. And I'm positive that there were originally some romantic scenes from the implied glances (and the missing time when they were in his bedroom) that would have made his betrayal sting a bit more.

I would have loved to see this same movie in the hands of Jordan Peele (and the big budgets that follow him). The actors and *full* plot would have certainly shined.

I didn't even make it past 30 minutes from the beginning of the film.. realizing that the characters seemed to speak as if they were NOT just freed. Watching a movie like this from such a historical time, I would expect the actors to embody the "slave mentality", the way they would talk, etc.. I don't know any GOOD movie with slaves from the 1800s that looks like this. The way they talk throws me for a loop alone. It's discouraging to watch, nevermind the storyline.. makes it painful to watch as it just seems...idk.. fake. Django ain't even as old as the movie Roots and that movie did a great job at displaying authenticity. And the lil black girl picking up the rock to a white man who had her brother by the neck with his gun had me thrown too.. what the hell was she gon do with that rock to a gun?! That's like bringing a knife to a gunfight and even back in these times, I'd think former slaves would know that much. This is only part 1 of my review. Let me get through the rest of this movie and see if I can find more compelling aspects about this here acting because right now, it looks terrible.

Right, well as I sat down to watch this 2023 horror movie, it was with the release title of "A Southern Haunting", so I figured that I would be in for a ghost movie. However, the title of this movie from writer and directors M. J. Anderson and T. Huff is 40, and that is also what was shown on the screen, during the title sequence of the movie. So the title "A Southern Haunting" was rather misguiding.

The storyline in "40" was somewhat dull and slow paced. It wasn't a particularly interesting storyline, though it was semi-watchable for what it turned out to be. However, I was expecting more of an ordinary haunting movie, instead I was treated to a slow paced tale of former slaves gaining their freedom, but come to acquire some cursed lands. Sure, it sounds interesting enough, but writers and directors M. J. Anderson and T. Huff just never kicked the movie up into any gear.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, but given the circumstances of the weak script, then the actors and actresses actually fared well enough.

Visually, then you're not in for anything spectacular. There were a little bit of special effects throughout the course of the 94 minutes that the movie ran for, but nothing noteworthy or memorable.

All in all, the movie is a rather forgettable movie, and not one I would recommend for horror fans to rush out and get to watch.

My rating of "40" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.