The Seeding Review | Freudian Horror Film Delivers Death in the Desert

Horror is quite often the conduit for our deepest neuroses and desires, something that is visualized quite literally in the poster for the new film, The Seeding. Barely one fifth of the poster exists above ground, in a kind of burnt orange sunset, while the rest of the image features the caliginous depths beneath the surface. We realize that the plant sprouting up into the dusk actually had deep, disturbing roots, connected as it is with a massive mysterious skeleton.

That’s the modus operandi in The Seeding, generally — a minimalist horror film with very little going on in the narrative but lots of subconscious menace brewing beneath the surface. Filmmaker Barnaby Clay takes us deep into the desert to spend time with two seemingly tortured souls lost to the world. In the process, he explores the innate traumas of the life cycle, the terror lurking in nature both human and environmental, and the fears men face surrounding fatherhood. While the film’s a little too abstract for its own good and bears perhaps too much resemblance to an old masterpiece, The Seeding is still a distinctly unnerving experiment.

Lost in the Desert with You

The Seeding

3 /5

Release Date

January 26, 2024

Director

Barnaby Clay

Cast

Scott Haze , Kate Lyn Sheil , Alex Montaldo , Charlie Avink

Runtime

1hr 40min

Writers

Barnaby Clay

Studio

Out of the Ether

Pros

• Scott Haze and especially Kate Lyn Sheil are excellent.
• The score from Tristan Bechet and Karen O is harrowing and masterful
• Barnaby Clay uses the natural landscape and the camera to build a palpable sense of dread.

Cons

• The Seeding is a little too abstract for its own good.
• The film feels too much like Woman in the Dunes to fully be its own thing.

The Seeding opens with a shocking stinger, setting the tone for what’s to follow — a toddler trudges around the open desert, blood on its face, chewing a human finger. Clay then establishes the setting with some impressive wide shots of the endless Utah expanse, specifically Kanab, where a host of classic Westerns have been filmed (Stagecoach, El Dorado, The Shooting, The Outlaw Josey Wales). Clay’s film ultimately becomes much more claustrophobic and brooding than most Westerns, however.

It’s the desert ridges where Wyndham Stone (played by Scott Haze) travels to photograph a sensational eclipse. On his way back to the car, he stumbles upon a lost young boy and attempts to help the child find his parents. After an argument, he loses the boy before finding himself lost as well. He stumbles across a metal-roofed house in the canyons surrounded by walls of rock; a ladder leads down into the isolated canyon where the lights are on in the shed-like abode. It’s night, he hasn’t had water, he’s cold, and they seem to be the only people for miles, so he travels down and knocks on the door.

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He meets Alina (played by the perfect Kate Lyn Sheil), an enigmatic woman who probably should’ve sent red flags to Wyndham if he wasn’t so desperate. But she has a spare bed, soup, water, and electricity. She isn’t much for conversation, but she provides what Wyndham needs. Except in the morning, when the man quietly exits the shed to climb back into Kanab, he discovers that someone has pulled the ladder up. It would take a proficient rock climber to escape, and it seems like a malicious pack of practically feral desert children want to keep him in the pit for good.

Putting the Gory in Allegory?

If we lost you at ‘feral desert children,’ then The Seeding will happily let you know that it’s an allegory above all, though the pain and suffering which ensues feels very real. It practically says as much when Wyndham looks at his new, small world in the canyon and proclaims, “It’s a microcosm!” As Wyndham and Alina play house and learn to live with each other while being tormented by evil children, you realize that The Seeding is very much a nightmare about parenthood, a fever dream of birth and death.

The film is brimming with neat imagery testifying to the fact, be it Alina marking the wall with tallies drawn in menstrual blood or matriarchal cave paintings on the canyon walls. The shed becomes a kind of psychoanalytical extension of men’s neuroses surrounding women, children and childbirth, domestication, and fatherhood, and also the ultimate Freudian wish of some men in general — to be taken care of by their mother forever, and to have sex with her.

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Clay doesn’t exactly provide a roadmap and key for all this, but the allegory feels almost self-explanatory. In fact, things are made to be so abstract (specifically the characters) that the allegory sometimes overwhelms the actual story here. Fortunately, the performances from Haze and the always brilliant Sheil keep things a bit emotionally grounded, and the clever camerawork creates a genuinely foreboding setting.

The Woman in the Dunes and The Seeding’s Score

That foreboding setting is probably more effective if you haven’t seen or read Woman in the Dunes, however. While the films are both very different thematically and tonally, it’s impossible to escape the presence of Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1964 masterpiece about a man who finds himself inexplicably trapped in a pit where a mysterious woman has built a home. Watching The Seeding, it’s simply impossible to distance yourself from that superior film, no matter how different the two are in essence.

One of the greatest and most distinct aspects of The Seeding, however, is its ominous score from Tristan Bechet, which sounds as if Alina’s metallic shed is having a nightmare. It’s an experimental, industrial piece of work that would stand alone, almost like Penderecki’s “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima” as remixed by Throbbing Gristle. It’s a phenomenal asset in setting the mood here, as is the “Mother Song” from Clay’s wife, Karen Lee Orzolek (Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs). One of the coolest people of the 21st century, Karen O provides a hauntingly warm, practically archetypal lullaby here that’s a perfectly sad accompaniment to Bechet’s score and the themes of the film.

You can find information about purchasing The Seeding score here when available. From Magnet Releasing, The Seeding will be available in select theaters Jan. 26 and also on digital platforms through the link below:

Watch The Seeding