Director Barnaby Clay does not ease audiences into the nightmarish world of The Seeding (2023). Instead, he drags us headfirst into the rotten, decaying underbelly of a distinct space in the California desert. The opening scene in itself is jarring — a disheveled child is seen roaming around in the desert alone, clutching onto a severed finger and nibbling on it. It might be tempting to categorize how the rest of the film unfolds as a fever dream. For the most part, it is one but also an unsavory, terrifying reminder of the horrors of isolation.
Wyndham Stone (Scott Haze) finds himself hiking across the desert one sweltering afternoon, camera at the ready to capture a mesmerizing solar eclipse. On his walk back to his car, Wyndham comes across a child who seemingly got separated from his parents, and in an earnest attempt to help him, the man ends up in the middle of nowhere, lost as the night falls. Something sinister seems to be afoot, but this prescience is only reserved for us, as Wyndham has no idea about the rungs of hellish suffering awaiting him in the canyon’s chasm.
With nowhere to go, Wyndham seeks shelter at the sole house in the deserted space, where a woman named Alina (Kate Lyn Sheil) lives. There’s something immediately intriguing about Alina, even though her presence starts off as extremely subtle and understated. She quietly offers Wyndham food, asks him to stay the night, and is a woman of few words. Even before all hell breaks loose, Alina emanates the inexplicable aura of someone whose subtleness is a deliberate choice, forever skirting the line between authentic and disingenuous.
The Seeding is not the kind of film that can be explained via a “what happened next?” narrative approach. It is an experience that demands to be seen and felt, as the audience is directly privy to the brutality of the space Wyndham finds himself trapped in and how horribly the odds are against him. This is not the kind of story where the protagonist perseveres and emerges victorious. It’s instead a tale of doom with a predetermined end, a cycle that is bound to be repeated every once in a while, just like the various moon cycles that the film segments itself into.
Seldom does a horror offering use its limited scope and setting so remarkably in its favor, as The Seeding establishes a wide-ranging vignette of tones with a taut, visceral dedication to the themes it posits. This is nature versus nature taken to the very extreme and grounded with the genuine possibility of insanity when one is thrust into an impossible situation, where death seems more inevitable than the faint promise of freedom.
Freedom for Wyndham is but a myth here, a cruel joke, almost, and the menacing, vulgar teenagers who rule the area ensure that all semblance of hope seeps away from him as the days pass. No societal laws or rules are applicable here — the desert comes alive at night, capricious, unforgiving, and menacing, pushing Wyndham to the limits of sanity. Although no one is truly blameless here, The Seeding underlines the vicious cycles of a ritualistic ouroboros, where birth and death assume the most brutal visage. Here, there’s no mercy, no respite.
![Baaghi 3 [2020] Review- an over-exaggeration of action and annihilation of the nitty-gritty](https://www.highonfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Baaghi-4-1-768x325.jpg)
