The Bottom Line
Pros
- Ample gore
- It eventually ends.
Cons
- Shallow plot
- Emotionally false
- Hollow characters
- Wooden acting
- Mean-spirited
Description
- Starring Michael Paré, Will Sanderson, Ralf Moeller, Jodelle Ferland, Thea Gill, Don S. Davis, Michael Eklund, Andrew Jackson
- Directed by Uwe Boll
- Not Rated
- DVD Release Date: September 9, 2008
Guide Review - 'Seed' DVD Review
Uwe Boll, the most maligned filmmaker ever, may have outdone himself with Seed. Whereas past works like Alone in the Dark have been merely incompetent and lacking in artistic merit, Seed compounds those issues with ugly nihilism, misguided emotions and an aimless plot. In Boll's cartoonish video game adaptations, you could laugh at the incompetence, but in this attempt to go "dark," there's nothing funny.
Max Seed is a madman who, over the course of six years, killed 666 people in the town of Sufferton. (If that sentence doesn't indicate the lack of subtlety contained therein, nothing will.) He's sentenced to death, but when the faulty electric chair fails to kill him, the cops, fearing the evocation of a state law that would set Seed free, pretend that he's dead and bury him anyway. He, of course, digs out of the shallow grave and returns for revenge. The end.
There's so little plot in Seed that the first 40 minutes are just flashbacks to the killer's capture, which add nothing to the film except 40 minutes. There's little insight into Seed's life beyond the fact that he was disfigured as a child in a school bus fire. Amazingly, that fact, combined with abuse at the hands of a few police guards, seems to make the killer sympathetic in Boll's eyes. We're supposed to feel that he's wronged by being buried half-dead. This, after the director spends 10 straight minutes showing footage of Seed's victims -- including a baby.
I'm sure Boll would claim that his film is edgy and uncompromising and that any detractors are just overly sensitive, but I was as disgusted by the film's execution as the content. Nihilism doesn't preclude narrative structure, emotional truth, common sense or basic writing, directing and acting skill.
The DVD
Special features include a behind-the-scenes featurette, deleted scenes and a short film.
Movie: F
DVD: C+
