Recalling Kaneto Shindo's 1964 Onibaba and William Friedkin's The Guardian (1990), The Empty Acre unfolds in a contemporary rural Kansas town, where a mysterious acre of black earth begins destroying the lives of everyone around it. It deforms nearby cattle, sucks the life out of vegetation in the area, and fuels the erosion of Jacob (John Wilson) and Beth Nance's (Jennifer Plas) marriage -- particularly when it sucks the couple's newborn infant away from them and out of sight. In time, a strange man turns up (Robert Paisley) with an unstated connection to Beth and inside knowledge about the child's disappearance -- posing a far more visceral threat to the couple's safety and well-being than anything in their prior experience.