⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A beautifully shot slow-burn B-movie with a goofy looking alien, fun dialog, and a visceral closing act. Meteor showers, man. What’s not to love?
Written/Directed by Sam Walker
Meteors.
If there’s one thing in the cosmos you should hope to avoid, it’s meteors. Sure, sure, comets have historically been seen as harbingers of doom and they do get their fair share of cinematic destruction. Just watch Night of the Comet (1984) or Lifeforce (1985) and you’ll get the idea.
Meteors, though…
- The Day of the Triffids (1963). The world goes blind and gets eaten by giant, shuffling plants.
- Slither (2006). Horrible, slimy alien worms consume a small town in South Carolina.
- Creepshow (1982). “Jordy Verrill, you lunkhead!”
- The Blob (1958). Steve McQueen vs. Space Jelly.
and the list goes on. As a space-based horror trope, more badness comes from meteors than anything else the starry skies have to offer.
The Seed (2021) is the latest project to grab that premise, clutch it tightly, and run screaming into the desert. To be honest, I’m not sure how I missed this one. As a fan of schlocky B-grade creature features, Sam Walker‘s feature-length debut managed to scuttle on past me in spite of its festival run and streaming release in March of this year.
The movie opens with three young women gathering at a beautiful house located in Middle-of-Nowhere, Mojave Desert for a fun and relaxing girls’ getaway weekend. Deidre [Lucy Martin; TV’s Vikings (2019 – 2020)] is the group’s driving force making her living as an internet influencer and beauty maven. Heather [Sophie Vavasseur; Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)] is the high strung, mildly high maintenance daddy’s girl whose father owns the house. And Charlotte [Chelsea Edge; TV’s I Hate Suzie (2020)] fits in as the underachieving animal lover who really hasn’t figured out what she wants to be when she grows up.
As the film rolls along in its slow burn, lightly comedic style, the weekend progresses according to plan. Drinking, partying, and getting great views of the spectacularly unprecedented meteor shower as it blazes across the night sky all add up to some good reconnection time for the three old friends. That is, until cell reception is disrupted and our friends find an unusual — and rather stinky — visitor splashed down in their pool.
What follows stays true to the pacing established in the first act and builds on the sci-fi weirdness as seen through the eyes of these three fairly unscientific ladies. That’s not to say the script is rife with bad decisions. Far from it, in fact. Refreshingly, most of the characters’ actions in The Seed seem perfectly logical from their point of view. As you’d expect from the friends’ backgrounds, those points of view may not always be tempered with expert knowledge of zoology or physics.
When The Seed hits its stride in the third act, the viewer is taken for a glorious, trippy, somewhat erotic, bludgeonly violent ride full of practical creature effects and disturbing, body horror prosthetics. Yes, the main critter in the film looks pretty ridiculous (goopy Muppet turtle from space!) and it never gets any better, but it’s a B-movie. Just keep telling yourself that and revel in its low budget awesomeness.
Fans of slow burn, well shot B-movies with realistic dialog and practical effects will definitely get a kick out of The Seed. You can catch it streaming on Shudder as well as AMC+.
Review by Robert Zilbauer.