I've seen most of German director Uwe Boll's movies and have lived to write the reviews, but three in one week is a bit much. We will have a review of House of the Dead: Director's Cut published soon, and here is Seed… but by the time it got around to me opening up Postal, I just couldn't. Consider that one stamped "undeliverable" and returned to the sender as we now examine the filmmaker's most controversial film, Seed.
I got my first warning from PeTA when text appeared on the screen regarding footage of actual animal abuse that would soon appear. I've made it known many times: as a human being who is also a movie reviewer, I enjoy fake, stylistic horror exploitation but I find it abhorrent to watch real deaths of any kind. I intentionally avoided the Daniel Pearl execution video online, and I skip ahead on any "Cannibal Holocaust" type movie. That is my choice — to me, there is a big difference between grand guignol and the real thing — though I did catch a little glimpse of a small animal (a raccoon?) being beaten to death during the opening credits. (It should noted that the director is a true animal lover and has rescued several dogs from starvation and given them homes. He's donating some of the proceeds from Seed to PeTA.)
With that bad taste in my mouth, I proceeded to watch the rest of the film all the way through and while "I get it" (I know my Nietzsche: man is the cruelest animal of all), I don't like it. Much like its sick-out cinematic brethren (Murder Set-Pieces, Raw Feed, and Chaos), Seed states the obvious and goes through the motions in the most extreme ways. While I can't say a good word about Raw Feed, at least Murder Set-Pieces had some good visuals and Chaos had some competent acting. Seed was just plain ugly. And boring.
Michael Paré plays a sad-sack cop on the trail of a silent serial killer called Seed (Will Sanderson) who was so evil he just wouldn't die in the electric chair, no matter how many times he got zapped. After the slasher who killed 666 people in 6 years is buried barely alive, Seed works his way through the soil and emerges with vengeance on his agenda. Too-dark, shaky-cam stalk-and-slab scenes follow, as Pare wrings his hands and looks worried a lot (he must have been watching dailies during filming).
In a particularly brutal scene which reflects the tethered animal being bludgeoned during the opening credits, Seed ties a female police officer to chair and beats her head with a hammer until there is nothing left but a neck-stump. It's impressive in its unflinching, unstylized glare; but is ultimately just disgusting and pointless. I wish I could un-watch it.
The ending, which prominently features the talented young Jodelle Ferland as Paré's character's kidnapped daughter, is predictably vile, nihilistic and sadistic. I'm all for child actors and do believe they know it's all pretend, but I do have to wonder what some of the long-term psychological ramifications might be for her — she's been in an awful lot of unusual and disturbing roles (Kingdom Hospital, Tideland, and Silent Hill to name a few). Some of her fellow genre-specialist predecessors haven't fared so well… but the ones who haven't committed suicide have gone into militant animal rights work (Pamelyn Ferdin and Linda Blair to name a couple), so maybe it's all connected somehow and leads to a greater good. I'll leave that issue to the PhD.s, but for the purposes of this review there is no question: Seed is absolutely not recommended!
On the DVD:
Commentary by Uwe Boll
Criticized: A Short Film by Richard Gale
Behind-the-scenes of Seed Execution
Deleted Scenes
CD-ROM of the Seed Game
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson