The Seeding begins with an audacious image of a very young child, toddling across a desert landscape, chewing on the remains of a very large human finger, their cherubic face and innocent eyes contrasted with a mouth smeared with blood and viscera. Tristan Bechet’s score erupts with an ominous burst of noise as the title is blasted on the screen. It’s a cheeky opening that brings to mind the cannibals in the desert horror of the 70s, in particular Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes or, probably more probable, Alexandre Aja’s early aughts remake. It’s the kind of opening that someone like Barney Clay, who cut his teeth on music videos from bands like TV on the Radio, Gnarls Barkley and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, would start his film with.

The sumptuous visuals continue, captured by cinematographer Robert Leitzell (who gave Black Bear its distinctive look), with the arrival of a young man named Stone (Scott Haze), armed with a camera and the intention of filming an eclipse. The ominous feeling stretches into these landscape porn shots, as the camera focuses on a closeup of ants marching around a chicken bone and birds circling in the sky and the body of a mangled fox. The eclipse ends and Stone sees a young boy who tells him he’s lost. With no cell service, Stone tries to cajole the kid to come to his car so he can call for help, but the kid continues on in the desert. And the man, who has apparently never seen the aforementioned The Hills Have Eyes, follows after. Eventually the kid calls him a slur and runs off, but it’s too late.

Stone is lost.

Eventually, he hears someone humming and follows the voice to a craggy valley where he spots a rundown shack and a woman (Kate Lyn Sheil). A rickety pair of ladders descend from the top of the canyon and, with nowhere else to go, Stone climbs down to figure out where he is and to hopefully get the woman’s help. He finds her almost mute, but she hands him a bowl of unidentified stew as if she knew he’d be here, and makes him a spot in the home to sleep. In the morning, he realizes his predicament is worse than he imagined when the ladders are gone and he’s trapped in the same canyon with the mysterious women and a group of feral teenagers on top.

Clay and his cinematographer really flex their visual muscles, creating incredibly amazing shots and relying on environmental storytelling to fill in a lot of the narrative pieces. The cinematography highlights the mise en scène of production designer David S. Bridson. In one striking image, the woman paints tally marks on the wall of the hut with her menstrual blood and it becomes evident just how long she’s been there. Title sections with names like “Harvest Moon” also showcase the lunar time they’re stuck in the canyon. The film has a hazy feeling of folk horror, as the tribe of feral children and teens seem to follow some sort of community and their harsh language feels very pagan. The production is filled with rural imagery and rustic existence as well as paganistic creations that’s indebted to folk horror iconography.

What follows is a very slow burn, single location indie horror film that’s big on dream scares and dialogue but lacking in real thrills for the most part. And with a title like The Seeding, you can probably guess where it’s heading…and when it finally gets there, the narrative does deliver on its horror, but feels a bit deflated by the end.

As a first feature film, The Seeding is audacious and striking enough that, while I’m mixed on its result, heralds an intriguing new voice in horror. I’m curious to see where he goes next.