Tags:
Film: The Seed
Year: 2021
Director: Sam Walker
Writer: Sam Walker
Starring: Lucy Martin, Chelsea Edge and Sophie Vavasseur
Review:
This is a movie that I learned about from other podcast hosts. It also was showing up as recommendations through Shudder and on ads for the service. I heard mixed things about this one though so I kept putting it off. It was one that I decided on as it made for an interesting double feature on Journey with a Cinephile: A Horror Movie Podcast.
Synopsis: what starts out as a girls weekend away in the Mojave desert becomes a tale of horror, death and alien invasion.
Where I’ll start is that I could tell this was probably made during the pandemic and I think that it uses it to its advantage. We have Deidre (Lucy Martin), Charlotte (Chelsea Edge) and Heather (Sophie Vavasseur) going out to the latter’s father’s house in the desert as the synopsis says. The reason they are is that there is supposed to be a once in a lifetime meteor shower that night. Deidre wants to use it for her social media. The other two also agreed to model for her new makeup line as well. Their main reason is virtually no light pollution to watch the event.
To give a bit more background on the other two, Charlotte doesn’t have social media. Her phone is also quite old and she doesn’t seem to mind. She is also the least successful as she works at a pet store. Heather is a bit anal. Her father owns this place as I said and she is constantly afraid things will get ruined. She has social media, but I’d put in the middle of the other two. She is lacking a bit of a personality and easily swayed.
The meteor shower starts that night. Charlotte and Heather watch while Deidre tries to get her phone to work. She can’t seem to get service and this frustrates her. There is something not quite right about what the women are watching. They point this out as well. Something then crashes into the swimming pool. Heather has the other two fish it out before it ruins anything. They notice that whatever it is has a face. It seems to have armor like an armadillo as well. It also stinks bad.
The following morning, their phones still aren’t working. This is troubling. Even more so for Deidre since she cannot ‘check in’ online. They have bigger problems though. Whatever crashed is no longer on the pool deck. They find that it has crawled into the yard. A gardener shows up, Brett (Jamie Wittebrood). They ask for his help. It takes convincing, but he does relent. This thing is extremely heavy. It also might still be alive. This is just the beginning of their girls weekend becoming a nightmare.
That is where I’ll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. What I want to bring back up was something I said in my intro, this movie feels like it is taking advantage of being made during the pandemic. We have a good reason for a group of women to go to a remote location and having a small cast. I think this works though. I’m a fan of isolated, contained stories and that is what we get. Plus, this house is in the desert. It is difficult to get back to civilization without driving. They also took what I’m guessing was an Uber or a taxi to get there as well.
Continuing on with this idea of isolation, this movie also does something else interesting. This meteor shower knocks out their cellphone signal. It also messes with the Wi-Fi, so our characters have no communication with the outside world. I don’t find this cheesy either. Technology makes concepts that worked better in the past not. When you get a plausible reason for it, I think that is effective.
I think what I should break down next are the characters and how this event is affecting them. We have Deidre who is vapid. I believe I heard my buddy Mr. Watson over on Jay’s New Horror Movies podcast state that we should hate her and he didn’t. I fall in line with him. I hate her for being this ‘influencer’ as she is annoying. She also has the strongest personality. Her two friends don’t like that she is mean. Her directness gets things done. I’m not shocked to see that she falls victim to this presence first though. To compliment her, we have Heather who doesn’t have much of a personality. She is a follower. Charlotte might not be as strong as Deidre in the beginning, but I like that her resistance against following the masses helps her in the end. It does feel like this group has been friends for a while. They harbor annoyance with each other due to everything they’ve been through until now and that works.
The last thing then for the story will be this alien presence. It is cute in an ugly way. I believe mostly what they did with it was practical, which I appreciate. They don’t give too much about it, but what they do is done in an interesting way. Charlotte experiences things that we see in montage form. Heather does as well. I will pull in the effects and cinematography here as I love how they handled it. It goes surreal and trippy. It looks amazing and I was impressed there. They also convey other things through camera effects as well. This is probably the strongest part of the movie for me aside from the acting. Since I don’t want to spoil things, the title gives away what its object is and working toward. I like that this explores a bit of sexuality here. It is done in a subtle way that I can appreciate. I got vibes of something like Society or even a bit of Lovecraftian otherworldly beings with the imagery.
The only other thing would be with the sound design. The music we have here is fine. It didn’t stand out or take me out of the movie. What I wanted to talk about is the sounds the creature makes. Early on, it mimics cries. This draws the characters to bring it inside the house. The longer they’re around it though, the stronger it becomes. The sounds it then makes are different a as well. I did like this aspect.
There isn’t anything else that I wanted to delve into with this, so what I’ll say in conclusion is that this is a solid movie. It was one that went on my list of 2022 movies to check out for some time and I’m glad that I did. There aren’t a lot of great alien horror movies out there. I like what this one is doing. It is held to pretty much one location and features characters that I’m interested to see what happens to them, even if I don’t fully like them. The acting was good. What they do with the cinematography and effects were solid. What they do with the sound design worked for me as well. This isn’t great, but I would recommend giving it at least a watch as I enjoyed my time with it.
My Rating: 7 out of 10