I don't know what bug crawled up Uwe Boll's ass and possessed him to make this movie. I think he saw Gaspar Noe's Irreversible and thought to himself "I could do that", but I can't be sure. What Seed provides is a paper-thin story larded with abhorrent visuals, and to be fair, one pretty disturbing and effective idea.
There's a warning before the movie even starts that there is footage of animal atrocities co-opted by PETA featured in this movie. Then the movie begins with 5 minutes of raccoons being whomped into the ground, a skinned bear slowly dying and a fox being skinned alive. Why? No idea, other than to show that titular character Max Seed is a bad, bad man. Seed, who wears a burlap sack looking mask throughout the entire movie, is one of those Super Genius serial killers. According to news clippings, he killed 666 people (oh snap) in 6 years, so he's obviously a hard worker. Why it took the dude from Eddie and the Cruisers and Streets of Fire so long to catch him is unknown. Also, it's the end of the 70's but Seed has access to a video camera. It's kind of hard to believe but whatever.
Most of this movie is super boring. There's a 20 minute scene where the Michael Pare - led team of cops go to Seed's hideout and walk around getting picked off one by one before he finally gets arrested. Later, he's electrocuted. Unfortunately, thanks to a totally-not-made-up law in wherever this is all supposed to be happening, if he doesn't die after being shocked 3 times then he'll be set free. At his execution, 2 rounds of electricity don't get the job done so the spectators are dismissed and Seed is then buried alive. Of course, he escapes and kills everybody.
So basically, this is Uwe Boll gone Totally Extreme. It even has a spooky nu-metal version of "I'm a Little Teapot" that plays over the end credits. It's pretty lame overall. However, there are a couple of things that weren't awful. One of them is a scene where Seed bashes some older lady's head in. The static shot is reminiscent of Irreversible, for sure - not to mention what it's showing. Ultimately, the shoddy CGI and what I assume was the director's skill set make it not particularly grueling, as in Noe does in 20 seconds what Boll can't do in 4 minutes. It's still a high point in a movie of this caliber, though. The best thing in this movie is some early scenes of time-lapse video recorded by Seed of bugs, animals, and people locked in a room and starved to death. It's actually pretty unpleasant and somewhat original. Not only that, it works to make the ending a good downbeat one.
Tomorrow: Baise Moi
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