When a red truck is left parked on her property, a public speaking professor inadvertently begins an escalating feud with two townie hunters. Based on the short story “Winter Light” by James Lee Burke, God’s Country is a frosty thriller about bad blood in the Alaskan backcountry where an attempt to be reasonable breaks down into white hot confrontation. Led by a commanding turn from Thandiwe Newton, the debut film from Julian Higgins spotlights the spurned Sandra approaching a breaking point, as her better judgment is overtaken by frustration with a community that doesn’t see her as an equal or want to take her seriously.

Grieving from the recent loss of her mother, Sandra (Newton) has trouble letting things go. At work, this manifests in the little things, like her (righteously) crusading for more representation among the staff. She wants a more inclusive work culture; to have the voices of her fellow female peers – too meek or, perhaps, too familiar with their place in the hierarchy – actually heard. Sandra’s intentions come from a good place but everyone treats her like she’s asking too much. Pushing too far. Unwilling to play ball. Cue Samuel L. Jackson in Jheri curls, “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of the evil men.” In this wintry far-flung corner of America, tyranny reins supreme.

Facing instances of open sexism, open racism, and good old boy camaraderie everywhere she turns, Sandra finds herself boxed in. Short on options. Not wanting to turn to the pistol she keeps stored away. But tempted more and more as each day passes. The red truck and the two rednecks who drive it, Samuel (Jefferson White) and Nathan (Joris Jarsky), keep appearing on her property well after she’s repeatedly told them not to park there.

While Sandra’s agitation over the situation with the townie hunters grow, her once-cautious butting of heads with the new dean Arthur Gates (Kai Lennox) becomes more open, hostile. Sandra is a woman at her breaking point, challenged by condescending men at work and on her private property. She’s not wrong to be upset. As Sandra begins to stalk the men, an uneasy game of cat and mouse ratchets the stakes higher. Inevitably, God’s Country reveals its final straw.

Newton offers a complex and compelling central turn as Sandra and first-time director Julian Higgins allows her the bandwidth to really sink into the quiet moments of her scene work; glowering in solitude, mulling over the severity of her response. She’s a character of great depth and Higgins is unhurriedly about portraying her as such, letting his camera linger so that we may see her for who she is.

Sandra’s grief haunts her and is never far from reach but something else grows within her. Rage. Righteousness. A firm stance of uncompromising morals. As we come to realize that Sandra is ex-law enforcement, we see that she may have a mind for academia but still thinks like a cop. A moral absolutist, her approach is rigid. By the book. She’s a crusader. Hot on the trail of the unjust. Newton explores the nooks and crannies of Sandra as she tries her damnedest to control a situation that she well knows may go completely off the rails.

The barren landscapes that God’s Country traverses are as icy and unyielding as Sandra, piling on a sense of desperate isolation. Out here, no one will hear you cry wolf. Higgins digs into the culture of this toxically American community on the fringe of society where a badge is nothing compared to a posse of dudes in trucks, where beef is settled mano a mano, where women’s only agency so often rests solely in their sexuality. There a powerful woman is unwelcome. Not cut out. Destined for a collision. And make no mistake, Sandra is a powerful woman.

CONCLUSION: ‘God’s Country’ uses strong character development – and Thandiwe Newton’s complexly stony central performance – to craft a thrilling dramatic crucible about escalation and American unrest in this chilling backcountry debut.