#TIFF24 Review: Seeds (Discovery)

By John Corrado

The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here.

Seeds is an Indigenous B-movie thriller that serves as the feature directorial debut of actress Kaniehtiio Horn, who also wrote and stars in the film. Horn plays Ziggy, an Indigenous woman living in Toronto who makes money delivering food on her bike, but wants to break out as a social media influencer. This leads to her signing a contract with a big agro company called Nature’s Oath, who pay her to promote their seeds on Instagram.

When Ziggy gets called back to the reservation to look after her aunt’s place while she is away, her cousin Wiz (Dallas Goldtooth) informs her that the company she is working for is actually the enemy. They sell patented “terminator seeds” that have to be repurchased after every harvest, and the company is trying to force traditional farmers to become reliant on their products, going against Indigenous traditions of passing sacred heirloom seeds down through generations

Horn’s film begins as something more playful, but takes a darker turn (including introducing a feline character, only to break one of the cardinal rules of screenwriting). And while the elements are here for an intriguing thriller with deeper environmental themes (including a score that’s trying to harken back to John Carpenter), Seeds as a whole feels disjointed and half-formed.

The tone is uneven, like Ziggy being guided by visions of Graham Greene, who comes to her to impart wisdom while she’s smoking weed. Ziggy’s shift from deeply naive influencer always snapping selfies for “content” to tough survivalist also doesn’t feel believable, and Horn crucially struggles to sell the shift into sadism in the torturous last act, which leaves us with a bad taste in our mouths.

Film Rating: ★★ (out of 4)