The Seed

3 women head for a weekend away to a swanky house in the desert. Two of them are social media influencers and one is not. In fact she isn't on any of the things and has a flip phone. A weird lil creature comes down in a meteor show and things get more and more body horror and bugnuts crazy from there. It takes awhile to ramp up and feels a little like a short film idea stretched thin in places. But once it does ramp up there is some gnarly visuals and practical gore effects and it gets very fun. It's a strong debut independent horror from a brand new director.

It tries to be different, going for an absurdist tone. The trouble is, the script contains zero jokes or physical comedy. The poor actresses are left to recite mundane dialogue in a 'quirky' way, which leads to scene after scene of unamusing waffle. The characters are thinly drawn and nobody is taking it seriously enough to warrant investment. The acting is otherwise ok, as is the editing and general production design. The less said about the soundtrack the better.

It's a very tame movie. The effects are poor. The occassional body horror is nowhere near as brave as films like Society or Reanimator which precede it by decades. It has no tension to speak of, so it doesn't deserve a horror label. There's no exploration of ideas, so it's not a sci-fi either. It attempts to bring eroticism into the main plot which could have been great, but the film is too scared to embrace titilation, exploitation and nudity. It also shies away from allegory, symbolism, commentary, character development... you know, all the stuff that makes good schlock tick. Ultimately, it's boring.

This is not a good movie. Plot is essentially "Mars Needs Women". Yet it is oddly acceptable in a 2am viewing kind of way. It's not a good film but I liked it?

Yes, it's not a good film but I liked it.

I looked at the 5 star reviews on shudder and thought this might be worth a watch. It was ok at best and nothing to get excited by.

For a low budget movie it's ambitious but ultimately a bit slow paced.

I really wanted to like it and maybe went in with unrealistic expectations because of the stellar reviews.

Not so bad you'd turn it off but not good enough to be remembered.

The Seed is an abysmal downer of a movie, with a plot that's so vapid, and characters who're utterly despicable. It's repetitive, boring, and substantially dull to the core. It doesn't even act as dumb fun. It's not fun, because it's unnervingly stretched out to the point that I had to skip forward through several scenes. The conversations between the girls have no point, the girls are highly dumb, and the mystery itself is a ticket to snooze-world. The alien has a face which could probably be the most laughable thing I've ever seen. And that's the only funny part of this. The moment I stopped taking that creature seriously, impatience steeped in, and add on top of that the shallow characters who're annoying as hell. So, I didn't care.

Now, I don't have all bad things to say. It's technically competent. The acting by the three leads was good, it's pretty gory, and there's a particular sequence, with girls and alien, more than halfway into the film which was pretty cool, and trippy. I give it 4 stars; 1 for the acting, 1 for the gore, and 2 for the mind trip sequence.

I'd probably have forgiven this, and would've maybe given 2 more stars, if our leading ladies' boobies got more screentime.