Rambling through the desert, a photographer, Wyndham Stone (Scott Haze), stumbles across a young boy claiming to have lost his parents. Attempting to do the right thing, Stone himself becomes lost and, as the sun falls, happens across an isolated shack at the bottom of a deep ravine.
Logic and common sense be damned (someone clearly hasn’t seen Wrong Turn), Stone knocks on the door of this tin hut and meets Alina (Kate Lyn Sheil). Before you know it, he’s been coerced into staying the night and, the next morning, discovers that the ladder out of this pit has disappeared. As the situation continues to tumble downhill, Stone is tormented by a gang of sadistic boys who do things like piss on his face, destroy his vegetable patch, and spit in his general direction. Alina, meanwhile, seems worryingly unconcerned by the whole situation.
Anyone who has seen the 1964 film Woman in the Dunes (upon which Barnaby Clay’s The Seeding is very much based) can see where all of this is headed. A slow-burn crossbreed of The Hills Have Eyes, 127 Hours, and Aronofsky’s Mother!, this arthouse horror story wears its metaphor on its sleeve (and in the title). Stone’s fate is well-telegraphed – but much of the tension is in the inevitability of his situation and the hurdles he has to leap through in plotting an escape.
Instead, the film is content to bask in its striking cinematography and grotesque imagery, letting the looming, imposing peaks of the Utah desert do much of the work while strong performances paper over any cracks in logic.
The Seeding is a haunting work of folk horror that is well-cultivated and nurtured to the bitter, inevitable end.
THE SEEDING is out on digital from February 12th 2024.
