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Overall Rating : 2.5/10
Directed By : Uwe Boll
Michael Paré (BloodRayne II: Deliverance)
Will Sanderson (In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale)
Ralf Moeller (Postal)
Jodelle Ferland (Silent Hill)
Supplied By : Vivendi Entertainment
Film Reviewed By : Rick L. Blalock
Date Reviewed : September. 3, 2008
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| PLOT Prison guards fail to exorcise the evil in a murderer and inadvertently unleash a malevolent monster. |
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| THE REVIEW Writer/Director Uwe Boll's SEED tells the story of Serial Killer Maxwell Seed. Seed was a killer whom was suspected of 666 murders before being brought down by Detective Matt Bishop. Now on death row, he was sentenced to death by electric chair...which is set to occur. With family members of the victims gathered to witness the execution, the officials proceed with the electrocution....but to their amazement Seed's vital signs are still present. So after this they try again a second time and this time around, it's the same outcome - Seed's heart is still beating. Despite still being alive and well, the Police officials inform the families that the person responsible for the deaths of their loved ones is indeed dead. There problem now is what to do, because by law, any man whom survives a 3rd jolt must be set free(at least in this movie they do), with no questions asked. Not willing to set Seed free, the Warden Arnold Calgrove orders his men to proclaim Seed dead, and to get rid of him by burying him alive. Well it isn't long before Seed "Unburies" himself and with revenge on his mind. Seed proceeds to locate and pick off one by one, each of those responsible for wronging him, claiming even more innocent victims along the way. Eventually Bishop, the man who captured him before, is pushed to his limits when his wife and young daughter are abducted by the merciless Seed. Anyone who knows Director Uwe Boll, knows that the guy has a horrible track record when it come to us genre fans. The guy goes out and makes lackluster nonsensical films(mostly based on video games), and when a fan or critic such as myself calls out one of his films' faults he gets mad and likely challenges them to a boxing much....because as we all know, boxing solves EVERYTHING! Well winning a few boxing matches against some online critics may have boosted Uwe's ego, but it did absolutely nothing to improve his film making ability, and SEED is proof. Now I know the way I described the film in my intro, I described it in a way that, I admit does sound interesting, in fact, SEED is quite interesting story-wise. SEED happens to be one of those films where the plot sounds good, but once you see it brought to life, the choices made by the director ultimately ruins something that could have and should have been great. For some odd reason, Boll decides to open the film with our killer, Seed watching footage of animals being tortured and skinned alive. This indeed is real footage, because the film greets us with a warning telling us so, and that it has been incorporated in the film to make a statement about the state of mankind. Say what now? Uwe Boll actually thinks that he is raising awareness by displaying such abuse in his film, a film that is going to likely be seen around the world, I see it as Boll knowing he could get away with something, so he does it. From that point on, the script for SEED goes downhill and is very disjointed, jumping from one thing to the next with not even a mere explanation. Following the unnecessary animal torture scene, we have officials talking about Seed's impending execution, bur without a blink we are then following Police officials as they are hunting Seed - and after a prolonged search in an old house(which within that time, a few officers meet untimely death), Matt Bishop apprehends him(but wait......didn't we just see Seed locked up in a previous scene?) I'm guessing that the search for Seed in the house was a flashback to the time when the killer was caught - however the viewer is kind of left wondering because Boll decides to not tell us anything. Boll also uses more time to show what are supposed to be tapes that were retrieved from Seed after his capture, the tapes include the death of animals and insects such as mice and roaches, and then moves on to humans - a female and even a young baby. After Uwe tries to shock us more with even more torture video(this time the deaths, of the humans are obviously fake), the film finally moves on to become your typical slasher - but by this time, it seems as if it took an eternity to get there, so any interest I had was dwindling. It's obvious, that with Maxwell Seed Boll set out to create his own iconic villain, his own Leatherface, Jason or Michael Myers if you will. In appearance he looks more like FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2's incarnation of Vorhees, dawning what looks like a burlap bag type mask on his head and wearing overalls, his brutish strength would be compared to that of Leatherface. So in short, in my opinion, Seed as a character is not so original,it's as if parts of him were borrowed from film villains that already exist. But watching this film in it's unrated form, it's clear that Uwe Boll utilizes excessive gore to try and make Seed as memorable a killer as he can. In my opinion, I wasn't too impressed, as I have seen it all before. There is a part in which Seed viciously beats a bound victim with a hammer, i'll admit that at first it was shocking, but Boll lets this scene go on a little too long, so much so that it kind of loses it's appeal. My main complaints here are again the same as they always are with every Boll film, which is the dialogue and the overall camera work. Again, Boll somehow is lucky enough to get great actors in the likes of Michael Pare and Jodelle Ferland, but unfortunately Boll fails to use them right. The character of Matt Bishop is supposed to be some kind of leader whose life has revolved around the capture of Seed for quite some time, he has struggled to have a happier life and so on. And in the end we are supposed to be convinced that when his wife and daughter are captured by the one man that has been his main focus, that he finally has reached his wits end. But in my opinion, what Boll is trying to accomplish with the film's ending, just does not work, because Matt Bishop is neither likable or unlikable, because we barely get to know him in the first place, because here, Boll concentrates more on developing a style more than developing character focus. In the cast as Bishop's daughter is Jodelle Ferland, and if you have read some of my other reviews, then you'd know that I see Ferland among the greatest child stars, she can virtually run with anything given to her and make it work. Unfortunately as was the case in his other film, BLOODRAYNE 2, he hands Ferland juvenile, naive sounding dialogue, and the most he requires her to do in this film is cry and sob - in my opinion, lots of talent is sadly wasted and not used to it's highest extent. My other complaint would have to be Boll's direction. It always baffles me as to why Uwe Boll chooses to shoot his films in such an erratic manner. Not only does the film jump from place to place, but so does the camera, initially it's fine, but after awhile it's like a hypnotic distraction. There's a right and wrong time to use this particular technique, but unfortunately Uwe hasn't figured that out yet(this same annoying camera trait was also present previously in his BLOODRAYNE 2). Overall, SEED is an uneven disjointed slasher film without any real focus on the story it presents, instead most of that focus is on gore and shocking the audience, unfortunately what Boll sees as shocking, is not hardly what I would call shocking. I see it as being excessive and juvenile. |
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| GORE
METER 5/10 Slit throats, impalements, eyes pulled out, lips ripped off, there is also the scene I talked about involving a victim being beaten with a hammer - this scene is really gory(mostly CGI created). |
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| MUSICAL
SCORE 4.5/10 The score is actually pretty decent and serves it's purpose. |
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| OVERALL
IMPRESSION OF THE FILM For a guy that goes through so much to prove himself as a credible filmmaker you'd think that he'd concentrate on making a film(or films) that would prove everyone wrong, but it seems as if his concentration is on other things like calling people like Michael Bay, a better, more established filmmaker out and challenging them to a Pay Per View boxing match. This still makes no sense to me, because even if he wins in the proposed match, at the end of the day he's still the same filmmaker. Before I saw the Unrated cut of SEED, I did see the Rated cut, which was missing 9 minutes or so of gore. I can honestly say that having those 9 minutes in this cut, did very little to change what I thought out it initially - it's still the same scattered, slow paced film I had seen before. I admit that this review may be a little hard to follow, but so was the mess of a film I had to base it on. This DVD will be available on September 9, 2008 |
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