Seed starts with scenes of real animal cruelty from PETA (and some of the film's profits will go to that organisation) as killer Max Seed watches on a TV screen. Is there a reason for showing this? That depends on your point of view, but it does get across the film's message right from the start – people are scum – and Boll did warn the audience before the film started. It is unsettling and upsetting but those are the reactions the film is aiming for.
Max Seed is a deformed, mask-wearing psycho killer, and that’s nothing new, nor is the fact he remains mute throughout the film, but unlike Rob Zombie’s recently released Halloween remake, which seems to want us to empathise with the killer (to the extent he’s almost the hero of the film), Seed elicits no sympathy from the viewer.
The film was short of plot (executed killer gets buried alive after the electric chair fails to kill him, digs his way out and sets about killing those responsible) but it’s not about plot, it’s making a statement about man's inhumanity to man and killer Max Seed says everything that needs to be said without uttering a word. A gory death is usually met with applause by the FrightFest crowd but when Seed kills a woman with a hammer the smattering of applause died out quickly. This wasn’t the fun gore of Wrong Turn 2, this was something different. Even with some dodgy CGI towards the end of the sequence, this was still the most unsettling and, yes, extreme thing I’ve seen in years.
Two people walked out of the screening. That wouldn’t be anything special at an ordinary showing, but for an audience of hardened horror fans it says a lot about the extreme nature of the film. It keeps the same tone throughout and doesn’t even wimp out at the end, delivering the darkest denouement I think I’ve ever seen.
I was so surprised I’d enjoyed the film (well, perhaps enjoyed is the wrong word) that I took the opportunity to shake Mr Boll’s hand after the film and tell him so. I think many people’s problem with Boll is envy — he’s managing to get films made without big Hollywood production companies and while they may not all be great (or even good), he’s not deserving of the title of worst director in the world; anyone who’s seen a Jess Franco film knows that. He’s passionate about his films and the horror genre and that can only be a good thing. During the Q&A after the film he complained about being short-changed by IMDb, saying that they allowed voting on his films earlier than anyone else’s, often even before they had finished editing them. When I got home that night I checked the user rating for Seed — it was under 2 with over 500 votes and ranked in the bottom 100 list. Given that this was the film's first screening, it adds a little weight to Uwe’s claims.
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