The Seeding | Written and directed by Barnaby Clay

[BluBonnet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cILLMZoXiCY

[BluBonnet]

‘The Seeding’ Director Barnaby Clay on How to Jump From Short Films to Features — Horror Film School

Barnaby Clay is a true Renaissance man.

Having directed short films (“Carousel” with Chloë Sevigny, “Sickdog” with Natasha Lyonne), music videos for artists ranging from David Bowie to Rihanna, a feature-length documentary on photographer Mick Rock, and even launched a visual art installation with Danger Mouse and his wife, Yeah Yeah Yeahs rocker Karen O, he is no stranger to expanding his creativity into different mediums.

Yet his newest frontier is feature-length narrative filmmaking, and his debut, the horror film “The Seeding,” expands on the striking imagery of his past work. The plot follows a man (Scott Haze) trapped in the desert, being taken care of by a mysterious woman (Kate Lyn Sheil), who may have an insidious agenda for keeping him safe from the roving gang of teens that are trapping him there.

[BluBonnet]

‘The Seeding’ Filmmaker Barnaby Clay Talks the Challenges of Indie Horror and the Roads Not Taken

Independent filmmaking is not for the faint of heart, and writer-director Barnaby Clay just spent eight years learning that lesson en route to his first narrative feature, The Seeding.

Clay began his directorial career in music videos for artists such as Rihanna, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Gnarls Barkley, as well as short films and documentaries, like the Mick Rock doc, SHOT! Stories of directors making the jump from music videos to feature films used to be more common when music videos were not only as visible as any movie or album release, but were also treated with nearly the same cultural cachet. The transition still happens, but not to the degree that it once did when the likes of David Fincher, Sofia Coppola and Jonathan Glazer launched their filmmaking careers off of their award-winning and artistic exploits in music videos.

[BluBonnet]

Now available digitally

[acroyear2]

As an experiment I listened to the film's soundtrack with only the artwork of the promotional poster as a visual to try an envision how I thought this movie might be. Without trailer or synopsis, I then proceeded to watch the film.

I had envisioned a story about a creature growing inside the body of someone who was being constrained in a pit against his will. Turned out I was partially right. It's not the body horror creepfest my imagination thought it would be, rather I'd classify this as folk horror with a bit of the occult thrown in. Without giving away too much premise

[Show spoiler]there is a strong influence of Hiroshi Teshigahara's 1964 masterpiece Woman In The Dunes, so much so my mind was distracted if this was going to be a full on remake. The connection between these films is more of a building block than anything.

Even when I could start piecing together what might be going on with the set-up of The Seeding there is still plenty of suspense. Scott Haze gives an excellent performance as a man who teeters between anger and acceptance of his predicament before losing his mind to madness. I wish we got more background on the community of characters we meet to flesh out the story more, as their exposition felt incomplete.

There are some fleeting, but amazing shots of abstracted visuals sprinkled throughout, seemingly through a distorted lens of our natural world. Those shots are darkly beautiful. (The closest I can think of is imagine the album cover of Metallica's Load in motion?)

Regardless, I would consider a blu-ray purchase. Magnet seems to have a good track record of releasing physical media, so fingers crossed.

Also, I can't emphasize how killer the soundtrack is (by Trztn), as this is what compelled me to give The Seeding a try.