Written By: Valkyrie Kerry and Bret Dyer
Three girls; Deidre, Heather and Charles, escape to Heather’s father’s villa, a remote, utopic oasis isolated in the Mojave Desert. Arriving by taxi, they are clearly cut off from the outside world. Their only connection is through social media, an online universe that is all to familiar to influencer Heather. Charles, however, is disconnected from the superficial vanity and self- aggrandizement that Deidre obsessively depends upon. Charles has a greater interest in books, and lacks the parental financing so eagerly abused by her peers.
The purpose of their vacation is to watch a meteor storm, and of course party, as is an essential horror trope when the narrative chooses its victims. As the ominous storm brews and the ‘meteors’ shower from the sky, the trio fail to notice the errors in celestial dynamics. Deidre more so as her attention is firmly fixated on her failing phone. As the storm dies down an object falls into the pool and is soon retrieved as Heather is concerned with her father’s reaction to soiling the villa.
Charlie recognises that the creature is an animal and uses a pictorial book of natural history to identify it. Overnight the creature moves across the lawn, and they follow the trail, even try and fail to enlist the gardener’s support in this. Eventually the creature cries for support and Charlie comes to its aid. Her friends are not so accommodating and want to kill it. Here the narrative changes, here the momentum picks up and the film really comes into its own.
Charlie and Heather drive to a neighbour to find help, all is not well. Deidre attempts to poison the creature whilst they are gone…
When Charlie and Heather return Deidre has reached a new level of apathetic, a hunger fuelled apathy. During the night Heather hears something, is drawn to it, and the true nature of the beast rears its head. The fight for survival begins, but survival for who?
The Seed has some issues with pacing, the first half hour is extremely and at times painfully drawn out. This is partially due to the attempt at character presentation and the repeated highlighting of the relevance of social media in modern society. All that matters is online affirmation, and this point is perhaps overly emphasized dragging out the opening far longer than is necessary. The characters are not likeable, and the audience would rather they were not relatable, but the purpose of this first part is to ensure that there is an awareness of this ugly dependence on digital commentary.
Equally, there is an over-reliance on standard horror tropes and stereotypical characters, the bimbo, the rich girl and the nerd. These characterisations are two-dimensional and unfortunately do not depart from their anticipated paths sadly making The Seed extremely predictable throughout.
None the less, The Seed does have some excellent selling points. The cinematography is postcard perfect, mood carefully reflected in the stunning, scenic shots both of the desert and of space. Similarly, the dream-like sequences are very clever in divulging aspects of the narrative through suggestion and imagery. There are some moments of visceral, yet artistic graphic horror, although the creature itself is somewhat lacking.
The underlying notion that people are willing to be rendered docile by external forces offers a well-played satirical undertone to the film. The wheat is essentially separated from the chafe, the thinkers from the socially manipulated and intellectually and emotionally numb. Those moments that depict the emotionally dead are indeed chilling and reminiscent of the same in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Overall, once the narrative takes off, once the creature’s nature has been uncovered, the audience is left with an hour-long roller coaster of crazy, and it is thoroughly enjoyable. An hour of surreal body horror, intense revelations and special effects that would make anyone feel uneasy.
In amongst this Cronenbergesque festival there are nods to The War of the Worlds, The Faculty, Slither, Body Snatchers, Society and The Fly. This film is slow to start, the characters are cringeworthy (and the acting at times) but it is worth struggling through the first half hour to see the carnival of science-fiction tropes and uncomfortable horrors that bulge and pulsate throughout the rest of the film. This is likely to become a cult classic.