★ 2 / 10
I don't have anything against Boll, but...weak movie. Brutal, but tedious and "fake."
amazing_sincodek
Short Version: Seed isn't worthless. It's just derivative and inferior. And soulless.Long Version: If you have never seen any of the films comprising the…
Short Version: Seed isn't worthless. It's just derivative and inferior. And soulless.Long Version: If you have never seen any of the films comprising the vaguely-defined "psychological horror" genre, this movie will probably melt your face off. Maybe not, but it will give you a good burn. The opening montage of real animal abuse will be sufficient to open your eyes to possibilities of brutality-on-video, and the (only) memorable gore scene later in the film will perhaps be more than you can handle. The climax will play with your emotions in a way that perhaps no other film has.But that's if you don't have much experience with the genre. If you've seen the real thing..."August Underground's Penance," for example, you will, as I did, find it terribly difficult to stay awake until the end of the film.Other reviewers have compared this to the video nasties of old. I understand this comparison. Like the video nasties, "Seed" is more violent than a mainstream horror film and less subtle. But the reason the video nasties are still known to us is not only for the above reasons--those that are still popular had something special. Permit me to be ambiguous, I think you will understand: those that have stuck around had "soul".Take this quote from Gabriele Crisanti, director of "Burial Ground," on an interview on the new-ish DVD: "...we will never have more films like these, because today, technology has surpassed imagination. And technology is cold. So many things will disappear because small films like these won't be produced anymore. Today we have great, exceptional tricks that are very expensive, but they are cold. Today a horror, a terror film of this kind costs more than a million dollars. These films were not so expensive...they are real effects, made with our hands".Perhaps it is wrong to take the comparison to old school horror so seriously. But Crisanti has hit the nail on the head. Even at their most seemingly exploitational, the best of the video nasties were pursuing a primitive "truth." And this is where Boll falls short. It's like he's seen the movies and not understood them. Everything on the checklist is there...BS about "making a statement about humanity," an obscene torture scene, etc. But it is, as Crisanti puts it, "cold." The gore is all CGI. The whole thing feels like scenes pieced together from other movies of various genres. And the pacing is sooooo slow. Man, so slow.Another interesting note: the one gore scene really reminded me of a video game.Anyway, enough BS. Weak movie.
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★ 2 / 10
Shockingly Pointless
Jonny_Numb
Over the past year, Uwe Boll has shown marginal improvement as a filmmaker, cranking out the competent "In the Name of the King" (a "Lord of the Rings" clone)…
Over the past year, Uwe Boll has shown marginal improvement as a filmmaker, cranking out the competent "In the Name of the King" (a "Lord of the Rings" clone) and the proudly vulgar, post-9/11 satire "Postal." But then came "Seed," and the counter was reset to Zero, keeping his bid for legitimacy and respect that much further out of reach. And I'm a fan of the guyhis films exhibit a uniquely screwball vision, and are never dull.Spawned from his frustration over the savage notices his early films received, "Seed" is a colossally misguided attempt at social commentary, and an even worse jab at creating an iconic slasher mythology (Boll often seems to be taking a page from Rob Zombie's successful reboot of "Halloween"). The antagonist is Maxwell Seed (Will Sanderson), a mute, hulking brute who's slain 666 people and sits on death row, awaiting execution; after unsuccessfully frying the beast, he rises from the grave to seek revenge on those who put him there...and so begins a string of wholly gratuitous mayhem.Trying to create a new-millennium slasher in the vein of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, Max Seed is too nondescript and boring to leave an impression, ultimately resembling a washed-up pro wrestler doing "The Toolbox Murders" on a succession of equally boring victims. Furthermore, Seed's character and Boll's "message" run contrary to one another: the death penalty is wrong, sure, but are we really expected to sympathize with a soulless killer who's left a couple hundred corpses in his wake? I think not.Meanwhile, Michael Pare acts like a listless, long-lost brother to James Remar's character on "Dexter": a cop who sits at his desk a lot, thumbing through newspaper clippings, and watching pointless stop-motion scenes of decomposing animals and people trapped in Seed's lair. By the time he and a bunch of cardboard cops storm Seed's hideout, the sequence is so drawn-out, ill-conceived (the lighting is almost non-existent), and unexciting (despite a healthy dose of gore) that it almost put me to sleep.The shoddy film-making isn't limited to just that sequence: "Seed" appears to have been shot by a drunken cinematographer, since the camera bobs and weaves endlessly, a technique that's more stomach-turning than the gore itself; these protracted takes of very little happening only draw attention to the meandering, almost non-existent narrative. At 90 minutes, the film is distended enough to be considered a form of torture, which might have been Boll's intent all along.Pure genius...I guess the joke's on me.
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3.1/10
7.6K
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@azra3l thanks for the warning! I can't atch it then....