
Final Rating: 3.5/5
Ed. note: read our original review of Seeds by Jeff Bulmer from TIFF 2024.
Kaniehtiio Horn pulls triple duty in the new film Seeds. She not only stars in the revenge thriller, but she also makes her feature film debut as a director and writer. This is clearly a story that is deeply personal to her and she makes a compelling case to be someone to watch as their star rises in the Canadian film industry.
In Seeds, we meet Ziggy (Horn), an inspiring indigenous influencer, who’s content focuses on combining her Mohawk heritage with food and plant content while living in Toronto. We’re introduced to her by way of seeing her posts. We see clips of her talking about indigenous myths that have been passed down, how her ancestors were known for eating the hearts of their enemies and the power that seeds have to feed a community. All of which works as foreshadowing for how the film will play out.
Ziggy is down on her luck, but somehow manages to score an endorsement deal with Nature’s Oath (a stand in for the agribusiness Monsanto), to be a brand influencer. All she needs to do is make several social media posts a week and she will finally have financial freedom.
Not long after taking on the sponsorship, Ziggy gets a call from her cousin Wiz (Dallas Goldtooth), who requests that she returns to the reservation to house sit for their aunty while she is on vacation in New Zealand. Wiz was looking after her farmstead, but his fishing business requires him to travel. So Ziggy packs up her computer and camera gear, along with her cat Potato, and heads back home to the rez where her emotionally unavailable ex (Bandit played by Meegwun Fairbrother) immediately starts blowing up her phone to reconnect.
From the opening scene of the film, we get voyeuristic shots of someone who is clearly watching and following Ziggy. For what purpose isn’t quite clear. When Ziggy arrives at her aunty’s house, Wiz spooks her by saying he has been seeing and hearing things outside the house, but it turns out he is just scaring her by bringing up folktales from their childhood. These stories act as harbingers of what might be coming.

Not long after Ziggy is left alone with only Potato to keep her company, things start to turn deadly in the literal sense of the word. That stalker turns into a real threat in the form of a gun for hire in Drake Bondsman (Patrick Garrow), who works for Nature’s Oath. The company is collecting and privatizing heirloom seeds for their own benefit and has specifically targeted Ziggy because her grandmother owns one of a kind beans, corn and squash seeds. He has followed Ziggy back to the rez to find those seeds and to not let anything stand in the way, which includes offering a member of the community $100,000 to help.
The film then evolves into a home invasion thriller where Bondsman will stop at nothing to get the seeds, while Ziggy must team up with Bandit and hope that Wiz returns from his fishing trip in time to help protect their family’s legacy.
The screenplay expertly blends comedy with thriller notes as Ziggy embodies a stereotypical influencer. She’s naive, self centered and possibly more out of touch with her rez roots than she would like to believe. But she is also self aware enough that she knows family comes first and to utilize her family’s multi-generation long history as farmers as a basis for her own path. Ziggy is also running away from trauma, as she has Bandit saved in her phone as “Emotionally Unavailable Ex – Do Not Respond”.
The film spends most of the run time setting up the family backstory between Ziggy and Wiz and what has been passed down to them from their ancestors. We learn that word travels fast on the rez as within moments of Ziggy returning home, the local radio station is already welcoming her back and playing her most requested song from when she lived there.
When the home invasion act starts up, things move quite quickly, almost a little too quick for my liking. Bondsman first searches the house while Ziggy is off site, and when Potato tries to protect the home from the intruder, we get an act of violence not usually depicted on screen and one that will likely turn off some viewers. Whether or not it is an act of bravery breaking traditional horror rules (serious harm doesn’t usually befall kids and animals) or cruelty for the sake of moving the story forward will depend on one’s own mileage with how it is handled.
Bondsman returns and has a final standoff with Ziggy as he forces himself into the house, ties her up and plans on torturing her to the point of death to find the seeds. It’s up to Ziggy to think her way out of the mess and since every time a new character interacts with her comments on her badassery and great shot we know that she will be able to handle her own.
The final act goes by a bit too briskly, after the first reconning of the house there is just one standoff that proceeds fairly fast. There is no real back and forth struggle where the upper hand gets exchanged several times. Ziggy is the underdog once, then runs the show, taking us right to the conclusion. We do get some nice emotional catharsis from when Ziggy and Bandit reconnect and put their differences behind them, and Dallas Goldtooth playing a similarly hilarious character like he did as the Spirit on Reservation Dogs lights up the screen every time he appears.
Drake Bondsman, isn’t just a hitman from a shady company, but is the physical embodiment of colonialism. Nature’s Oath, just like the real life Monsanto, is pillaging rural communities’ way of existence the world over and specifically targeting indigenous groups who have been the protectors of the lands they have lived on for so long. He is also a reflection of the country of Canada by way of wearing a crucifix necklace symbolising the Catholic church and when Ziggy has stripped him down and tied him to a pole to exact her revenge, he is wearing maple leaf boxers, a not so subtle dig that doesn’t need explaining.
Kaniehtiio Horn has turned in a very solid thriller that has enough love and care put into it that it separates itself enough from the genre making it a unique spin on the home invasion/revenge flick. Some of the plot details are a little too convenient and surprisingly enough, the film should have been longer to draw out the tension and scares of the actual invasion aspect, which would have also made the final scenes even more cathartic and well earned. Horn seems to be following in the footsteps of the late Jeff Barnaby (Rhymes for Young Ghouls and Blood Quantum) by taking familiar tropes and genres and putting an indigenous spin on them, making them feel fresh and exciting.
Seeds was seen during the 2025 imagineNATIVE film festival.