 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: The Seed • Year: 2021 • Country: UK • Director: Sam Walker • Main cast: Lucy Martin, Sophie Vavasseur, Chelsea Edge • Runtime: 91 minutes • Production company: Camelot Films, Hardman Pictures, Shudder • TRAILER
|
The Seed (2021) is one of those titles that can fit perfectly in any horror festival or TV horror channel. It has everything one needs: a simple but original enough story, solid performances, a few surprises, and a generous amount of blood and guts. Also, it has been described as a horror-comedy but only because it has been developed with a very healthy and irreverent sense of humor, but by far this is not a comedy film.
The movie centers on three girls in a weekend getaway in a house in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert, in the Southwestern United States. Their main objective is to witness a meteorite shower announced to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, both for the fun of it and also for some tasty bait for social media. But, soon, they encounter a strange creature from an unknown origin, perhaps some kind of baby bear, surely not an armadillo, and things will start to take a strange path.
The writer and director Sam Walker debuts here with a feature film, but it is the work of a filmmaker who knows what he is doing. With basically three characters he builds a story that will get the audience glued to the screen from the very first minute. Some cliches in the depiction of those characters, two superficial fashion and social media junkies and the third one who is more of an analog nerd, with her old-fashioned cell phone and her interest in those forgotten containers of information called “books”. Yet, the characters have more than one dimension, as the fashionistas are not as dumb and useless as we might expect, and the nerd can also be an A-class party animal.
Also, once the strange creature appears in the scene, another situation we have seen many times in other titles of these characteristics, the way the story develops displays its own personality. All those familiar situations in the universe of horror movies are dealt with in a fresh way, which allows for some surprises, unexpected behaviors and happenings, and, overall, the feeling of not watching another puzzle following an overworn formula.
The trio of actresses formed by Lucy Martin, Sophie Vavasseur, and Chelsea Edge proudly sustain the entire movie, as it is them on the screen almost the whole running time. They are at the service of a story that flows very dynamic, never gets boring, and has a direction that keeps the pace alive with some surprises and with a growing sense of tension.
The Seed (2021) is at times dark, at times close to hilarious, and at times trippy. One can feel the influence of teenage slasher films, but also of more serious tone science-fiction horror like Species (1995), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), or even The Thing (1982). And towards the end, when it comes to the pure horror part, the filmmakers pull out all the stops in order to create a few disturbing sequences that are nothing but the icing on the cake of the journey this movie is.
Perfect for a horror festival like Beyond Fest, where it has its world premiere, and Shudder, where it can be found for streaming on March 10, 2022, The Seed (2021) should satisfy all the horror fans in the search for something entertaining and fresh. And, for me, the best movie I have seen this year so far.
RATE: 7/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt12449586
