By SHAWN MACOMBER
Starring Scott Haze, Kate Lyn Sheil and Alex Montaldo
Written and directed by Barnaby Clay
Magnet Releasing/Magnolia Pictures
From the very beginning, THE SEEDING makes no bones about its intention to take us to some dark, desolate places. And by “no bones,” I mean that this beautiful, harrowing, thought-provoking film (now in theaters and on VOD) opens with a toddler stumbling around a badlands-esque landscape gnawing on a human finger like it’s one of those mini-hot dogs Gerber sells in tiny jars–a not particularly subtle warning that we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. But rather than a Technicolor Oz, we’re transported to a sandblasted, isolated corner of the planet where the usual rules don’t apply, but have been subverted altogether.
The finger food seems like an omen–and thematically and tonally, it is to some degree–but on another level, it’s also a bit of a misdirect (at least for the next two-thirds of the film). Yes, there will be blood and pockets of violence–long periods of rumination and self-inventory punctuated by sheer terror, to paraphrase the infamous description of fighting in the trenches of WWI.
Which is to say, in THE SEEDING the most harrowing battle will be the one waged within. Is civilization an evolutionary end or a construct flimsier than any of us suspect? What about the transcendent soul? If such a thing resides within our mortal bodies and nudges us toward unseen higher planes of existence, why can it never vanquish–or, under the right circumstances, even hold at bay–our primal, animalistic id?
It’s interesting, on a meta level, that the film was written and directed by Barnaby Clay, who cut his teeth directing music videos for a diverse array of artists (Rihanna, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Take That, Depeche Mode’s David Gahan) as well as the Mick Rock feature-length documentary SHOT! THE PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL MANTRA OF ROCK. In other words, THE SEEDING comes from the mind of a man who has spent much of his impressive career exploring a border-transcending universal language, and now, for his debut narrative feature, has chosen a story about an isolated place where the sole murderous dialect is incomprehensible.
Duality!
But before we get into what Clay is really exploring here on a psychological, sociological and, indeed, genetic level, let’s get some storyline basics down. Into the aforementioned environment confidently strides Wyndham (Scott Haze of ANTLERS), an everyman from the city venturing out to snap some vivid landscape photos. He’s just about ready to call it a day and head back to his car when he comes across a young boy in distress. A boy who says he’s lost. A boy who insists in a manic way that the only way Wyndham can help is to follow. Alas, follow Wyndham does, that city-boy confidence getting ahead of his survival instinct, shades of a million movies from DELIVERANCE to THE HILLS HAVE EYES and beyond.
Sure enough, once the boy has got Wyndham completely turned around and drank all the water, he picks a fight with the man and abandons him to his fate. This is how Wyndham ends up tired, cold and delirious from thirst at the edge of a deep canyon with a lit-up house at the bottom. The only way down is by a hanging ladder. Perhaps in the light of day, rested and hydrated, he would make a different choice. But in his current state, he chooses to descend.
Once at the bottom, he meets the house’s inhabitant, Alina (YOU’RE NEXT’s Kate Lyn Sheil), who feeds him and offers him shelter for the night. The next morning the ladder is gone, and Alina vibrates somewhere between cagey and maternalistic, sometimes behaving as if he should simply accept his de facto imprisonment without question. At other times, she cares for him, especially in the aftermath of intermittent sadisms courtesy of a gang of LORD OF THE FLIES-y youth who also toss down supplies, leaving Wyndham (and us) to question both their motives and Alina’s.
As the lunar cycles go on and Wyndham begins to find evidence of a pagan or myth-driven aspect to his imprisonment, he begins to question not only whether he actually was free or happy at all in his former life, but also begins to embrace a devolution to a more primitive identity. Whether that social transmutation is a miscalculation on the part of Alina and/or the sociopathic youth or exactly what they’re trying to instigate is far too close to spoiler territory to parse in this review.
What can be said is that the film’s setting is as breathtaking as it is humbling, the performances by Haze and Sheil are nuanced and powerful, Clay’s patience in pacing and letting ideas percolate is impressively assured and the film’s ultimate question will stick with those who are up for plumbing their own depths via these characters. When all is stripped away, and neither the strictures of social and cultural norms nor our own self-definitions hold us in line any longer, how far will we descend down our own metaphorical ladders into the canyons of ourselves?
