Seed – Uncut version
Max Seed is a gruesome serial killer. In total he’s managed to murder 666 people in 6 years and the day detective Matt Bishop managed to capture him, he killed all of Matt’s colleagues at his house during the raid. Ever since, Max has been in prison, awaiting calmly to the day of his execution on the electric chair.
When that day arrives, however, there’s something wrong with the chair and after two attempts without success, the warden decides to have Max buried although he’s still alive. After all, US law states that after three attempts without success, the prisoner has to be freed and nobody wants that. Unfortunately, Max manages to get out of his coffin and dig his way back to the surface where he goes looking for revenge…
Sound and Vision:
Max Seed has a very 70s atmosphere and the image reflects that. Unfortunately, plenty of scenes are so dark and without detail that it’s very hard to follow what’s going on. Even the splatterscenes are so unclear at times that you have to go by the noise without ever really knowing what is actually happening.
The sound does a nice job as in fact it gives a better idea of some of the gore than the actual footage. The surround speakers are used in a subtle way, just like the subwoofer but there’s nothing wrong with that
Extras:
There’s a pretty standard Making Of where we get to see some interview footage with some of the cast but mostly it’s Michael Paré who does the talking. This is varied with some actual movie footage but the clear absentee is Uwe Boll himself as he’s nowhere to be seen in this features. We do get to see him in some Behind the Scenes footage but that’s not really interesting. What does interest is the short movie “Criticized” which is definitely worth checking out and is in fact even better than the main movie. Great stuff! Furthermore we get some deleted scenes
Conclusion:
Lately, Uwe Boll’s movies were getting better. Not to the point that they were actually good, but they weren’t as awful anymore as they used to be. When I heard that Boll was going to attack the horror/slasher genre I thought he might pull it off. After all, many directors start with a small budget and then grow to bigger budget movies so Boll going the other way around could only be a good thing, no?
Well… no. Although the amount of gore in Seed is decent, there’s no tension to be found anywhere and the fact that half the movie is in scenes so dark that it’s almost impossible to follow what’s going doesn’t help either. However, this shouldn’t really come as a surprise as Boll saw “Seed” as somewhat of an experiment. Where things could have been somewhat decent, Boll decided to go tackle horror without a script and just go with a general idea and let the actors fill things in so that afterwards he could just pick what he thought was good enough.
Bad idea! Although slasher movies aren’t known for having great storylines, they do need tension to be present in order to be successful and to get that you need… indeed, a script.
Buying this disc, however, doesn’t mean you get just another plate to put your glass on. In the extras we get a short movie called “Criticized” which is really terrific and shows that with little means you can indeed create a great feeling of anxiety. Maybe Boll should get some lessons from Criticized-director Richard Gale
4.0