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.
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.