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43%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #5,113
...out of 20,698 movies
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After surviving the electric chair, convicted serial killer Max Seed is buried alive. He digs himself out of the grave and goes on a killing spree, taking revenge on the men who put him there and random unfortunates alike.
--TMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: September 15, 2008
There are many of you who will see the name Uwe Boll attached to tonight's film and pass on it based on nothing more than the man behind the camera. Hell, this is a movie that was ranked around the middle of the IMDb Bottom 100 before it was even released, so it should go without saying that there are legions of Boll haters out there. However, I decided to take one for the team and give this a shot so that we could get it listed on this site, and you know what? Boll's journey into the world of nihilistic horror wasn't half bad. Actually, I'll go one further and say that Seed was a damned effective and highly memorable horror film. Yes, I was as shocked as you are.
Although the timeline of the film takes a cue from Pulp Fiction by showing things out of order, the general idea of this seventies-oriented film is that Max Seed (Will Sanderson) is a sadistic and deranged man who takes great delight in murdering his innocent victims in the grisliest ways possible. He is eventually caught by one Detective Matt Bishop (Michael Paré), thrown in jail, and sentenced to death for his crimes. With the man safely behind bars, the police raid his house and make some gruesome discoveries, including tapes of his victim's deaths as well as time-lapse photography of their decomposition. To say that Seed is one sick fuck would be an understatement, but his execution is just around the corner and everything will be back to normal afterward... right?
Well, there's this little law in the books that states that any man who survives three jolts in the electric chair is to be set free, presumedly due to an act of God or some such. Combine this with the fact that the executioner (Michael Eklund) is concerned that the malfunctioning chair may not be able to get the job done and then throw in the little thing about the warden (Ralf Moeller) ignoring these concerns in an effort to kill Seed as fast as possible, and you wind up with a man who - though severely injured - has survived his own execution. Now, these boys in blue aren't about to let Seed walk free due to something as silly as a little law, so they bind his hands, toss him in a coffin, and bury him alive. That doesn't work too well, and soon, Seed has pulled himself out of his shallow grave and set out for revenge on those who have wronged him... and if any innocent victims happen to get in his way, well, it'll suck to be them.
When I said that Seed was a highly memorable horror flick, I wasn't bullshitting: Boll has really created one hell of a film here. I'm not handing out pity points and I'm not saying that it's good just when compared to his other releases - what I'm saying is that this film is damned good on its own, and if you compare it to the recent crop of horror releases, it more than measures up. The reason for this success is simple: not only is the movie good, but it's also seemingly made especially for those of us who enjoy brutality at its finest. When the movie begins, we're immediately assaulted with brutal PETA footage to set the tone for the film in what could be perceived as cheap shock value, but given Boll's stance on animal cruelty and the bleak tone of the rest of the film, this footage doesn't feel out of place. From there, we witness not one but two infants being murdered, with one of these scenes being especially disturbing as we listen to the child scream in pain before watching it die and then we get to see the maggots go to work on the corpse. All of this takes place in the opening scenes of the film, and it just gets better - or worse - from there.
There is some surprisingly good CGI used in the film, but for the most part, it's all top-notch practical effects. The end result is a film that will have the gorehounds wetting their pants, and there's one scene in particular that stands out above the rest. We see a woman tied down to a chair as Seed pokes and prods her with a hammer before gradually upping his ferocity and beating her brains in. When all is said and done, the woman has been almost decapitated courtesy of the repeated blows to the skull, and the best part of this scene is that it's done in one continuous take. The camera never cuts away from the brutality, and although observant viewers may be able to pick out where the cuts come in to allow this effect to take place, the entire thing is pretty damned deranged.
Perhaps the best part of the film is the general tone presented throughout the running time. There are no comedic relief characters, there are no witty one-liners, and save for a brief, self-degrading reference to BloodRayne, there isn't an ounce of humor to be found in the ninety minutes that the film runs for. I suppose that it could be said that the general character of Max Seed is a bit far-fetched and humorous as a result, but to be fair, slasher flicks from the seventies and eighties - the obvious inspiration here - weren't exactly rooted firmly in reality themselves. This is a film that plays everything straight and attempts to come off as a legit horror film, and you know what? It works. It's shocking, it's suspenseful, and it will keep you glued to the screen until the credits roll.
The film isn't flawless as I thought that this scene could have worked better without the musical score and that scene would have benefited from a reshoot, but it is a film that fans of blood-soaked horror will enjoy. Some of you will scoff and ignore this review based on Boll's previous work, but let me wrap things up with this: if Boll's name wasn't attached to this film, you would have heard a lot more praise for it. 8.5/10.
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#1:
Ginose
- added September 15, 2008 at 4:35am
Fuck... and I passed this one over, earlier... I
actually did give it a second look, even if it was
from Boll... mostly because I had to laugh at the
fact that he actually packaged a PC copy of
"Advent Rising" with it. Still, the
cover and description were enough to put a
"seed" of doubt in my mind (in terms of
instantaly hating it from the sight of
"Boll" on it)... guess I'll pick it up
tommorow...
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#2:
grain of sand
- added September 16, 2008 at 3:00pm
Damn, you've got me interested.
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#3:
Ginose
- added September 19, 2008 at 5:25pm
Not BAD by any means... but Boll's annoyingly
shoddy camera-work gave me a headache during
several scenes. Also, the lack of dialouge made
the movie DRAG SO FUCKING HARD! I'll say that
against alot of his other films this is a
masterpeice of genre work, but, on it's own, it's
good, but not great by any means. 7.3/10... and,
for the DVD, 8.2/10 for a copy of "Advent
Rising" and a nice little short film.
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