Tell Me Why We Let Uwe Boll Direct Again?: Seed (2007)

Seed (2007) (AKA "Shocker")
Rating: 1/2
Starring: Michael Paré, Will Sanderson and Ralf Moeller

Yeah, how about no...

If there's one guy I want to stop making films, ever, it's Uwe Boll. Let's face it, not one single title he made can be counted as a classic unless you're the kind of guy so easily entertained by contrived special effects, plots as crumbly as discarded egg shells and a questionably cheap-looking productions all in all.

Here we see the guy trying his grubby hands on making a slasher/serial killer monstrosity simply titled Seed, about a man named Max Seed who has the habit of kidnapping people and starving them to death in his basement while recording the whole ordeal on tape. He's captured, convicted and sentenced to be executed via electric chair, but after surviving the execution, the unamused officials who ordered his death opted to have the guy buried alive instead, despite knowing that he should be walking away with a new lease on life as according to a state law, anyone who survived the zappy chair should be released as a free man.

I call bull on that, but the movie really tries to hammer this in.

Yeah, my bullshit-o-meter was peaking on high reading this.

So, after biting and clawing his way out of his grave, Seed starts to exact bloody vengeance on all of those responsible for his capture and live burial. And I mean very bloody.

Now let me start with what I appreciate from this movie: Max Seed, for one, is a cold and intimidating killer. A real robust yet silent type who barely says anything above a whisper, which I find cool. There are two kills here that I like here: the baby starving scene, which is as unnerving as it is shocking, and a very effective looking pike impaling that uses some neat practical effects and a nifty editing.

Sadly, that's as far as I could go on praising his movie. There's really not much to go with here as Seed (2007) is a lazy, cheap and tedious walk through the basics of slashers, serial killer and revenge genre, littered with cheap scares and one-note gore. The opening video featuring a stock footage of poachers killing animals is certainly upsetting but this might be the only thing worth being upset about. The pacing of the movie is horrible (a lot of stretched out scenes that could have been done away shorter or with better script) and the rest of the murders are bloody, but stale. There are some attempts to do a solid cop drama along the way, but it ain't going to work right if the script lacks material and the casts are hardly worth rooting for. (Not to mention, they can't act.)

Heck, not even the most talked about axe scene here cut it for me: It's around, what? Four or five minutes of me watching Seed beat a CG victim's head with the dull end of an axe before he completely goes ape with with the swings and pulps it completely. As much a I like a good gory kill, this one is too fake looking to enjoy.

It slowly creeps into a finale that sortah inspired the same ending found in the overrated mad doctor psychological horror Dread (2009), but the shock factor is gone between all these boring dialogues and uninspired murders. All we have here left is an empty story so draggy that every time I try to re-watch and pull myself to like it, I always ended up half-asleep, pushing the fast-forward button out of frustration or just stop the whole damn thing and watch Day of the Dead (1985) for some reason.

If you're an Uwe Boll fan, go ahead and take it. Your kind definitely deserves this. Now, if you don't mind, I'm just gonna watch a lava lamp get cooked inside a microwave. Plenty of excitement there and less painful compared to this...

Bodycount:
1 male executed via electric chair
1 baby had its head smashed against a pole (dream)
1 baby starved to death
1 female starved to death
1 girl corpse found
1 male gets a pickaxe to the head
1 male gets a powerdrill to the back
1 male slashed with cleaver, decapitated
1 male found murdered
1 male have his arm broken with a kick, killed
1 male stabbed in the eye with a pen
1 male had his head kicked through iron bars
1 male electrocuted in electric chair
1 male had his face bitten off
1 male impaled on steel pipe
1 female had her head beaten into a pulp with an axe
3 bodies found dismembered with a woodsaw
1 female shot to her head with a nailgun
1 male shot on the head
Total: 21