Film Review: "Seed" (D)

Part of having a wristband for Fangoria Weekend of Horrors - more on that later - is that I got into a mini film festival (free) at the Alamo Drafthouse Village. Now, I love the Drafthouse ... it's pretty much my second home when I'm in Austin. But I did NOT have a good time in the theater last night, despite Uwe Boll being there to introduce the film and do a Q&A after.

First, I want to preface this by saying I am not one of those Uwe Boll haters - I actually think he's very intelligent and funny. While I've never sat through one of his films and thought it was the best thing ever or even close to it, I don't unfairly criticize directors just because of who they are. I respect him for fighting back against his critics, especially since the vast majority of them seem to hate Boll films even before seeing them.

However, I did not enjoy "Seed." Not even a little. I was bored, I winced at some of the plot-holes and general stupidity in the script and the acting was ... cringe inducing (Michael Pare was alright). I thought Boll's assertion the film was a treatment of how people treat people was ... a bit pretentious and going overboard. The film is a bad slasher flick and it doesn't even have the fun feel that movies like this need in order to work. Boll said the movie is supposed to be bitter and dark, not fun, and I get that ... I honestly do. But someone needs to step up and tell him he has to choose between one sub-genre and the other, at least for a movie of this caliber with a not so stellar cast and a not so stellar script (consequence of writing this movie the same time as "Postal"?).

Warning: I pretty much give away the entire plot of the movie here. I don't usually post SPOILERS, but ... I feel I should warn people to keep their $8 and see something else.

My first big what the fuck moment occurred when only 5 cops were sent to take down Sam Seed, a serial killer we're supposed to believe killed 666 people in 6 years. That was just stupid. The fight sequence leading to Seed's capture was lame. The kills were lame. I was bored. I sat there drinking my water with lime, swirling it around and picking out seeds I was so goddamn bored. Then there were a few, smaller, moments that seriously bugged me, but then the "hammer sequence" occurred. It was too long. Long to the point that it ceased being disturbing and got ridiculous, especially since it didn't look that real after a point. I thought the beginning of that sequence had potential, but it just ended up being silly.

The end was too convoluted. It didn't make any sense at all. Assuming that someone actually managed to survive three shocks of that magnitude in an electric chair, there is no way that they'd have any brain power to do anything but sit and drool. How the fuck, then, are we supposed to connect with the storyline and believe that Seed can kill enough people to get out of the prison (which is on an island) and fucking SWIM to get to mainland? And if that wasn't enough bullshit, then he KNOWS THE ADDRESS of the detective who captured him.

This is where things start to seriously spin out of control - as if it could get worse. Uwe Boll said that Seed is supposed to be like a lifeless, killing machine. That really doesn't make sense when he's doing things like taking the family of the detective or forcing people (and hey, a baby) to starve to death in a basement. And further, we're supposed to understand that all of this is some grand scheme to make the detective kill himself? Which he does. Okay. So then Seed puts the daughter in the same room as her dead dad's body with a saw? And that's the end? WHAT?

Boll said in the Q&A that the end is supposed to mean that the daughter is supposed to cut up her dad and eat him for nourishment so she won't starve. No one in the theater got that - Will Sanderson who played Seed and was at the Q&A didn't even get that until Boll explained it.

The movie was just bad all around. I wish I could get that 90 minutes back. If I knew that was the mess I was going to be seeing, I fucking would have gone AND PAID to see "Cloverfield"!