In British director Sam Walker’s entertainingly shlocky debut feature, three girls – Deidre (Lucy Martin), irritating social media obsessive, Charlotte (Chelsea Edge, slightly more reserved and commendably internet-averse, and Heather (Sophie Vavasseur), somewhere vaguely in between the two extremes – head out into the Mohave desert for a girls’ weekend at Heather’s father’s luxury ranch. They also plan to take advantage of the clear Californian night sky to watch a once-in-a-lifetime meteor shower. During the shower, something strange and distinctly stinky crashes into the pool. The next morning the girls’ phones give up the ghost and they find themselves trapped in the middle of nowhere, having – perhaps rather foolishly – taken pity on the rather grim-looking creature that unfurls from the unexpected pool arrival.
The Seed has very little new to offer but it plays quite pleasantly with several genre staples – surreptitious alien invasion and bodily possession and corruption – and ladles it with some oozy gore and slime to satisfy the demands of body horror gurus. Despite his undoubtedly tiny budget Walker has created something with a genuine cinematic sensibility (Malta stands in for California and gets away with it quite well) and the three girls (the only substantial speaking roles in the film) carry the weight of the narrative well and, despite the fact that the film tells us nothing about their lives outside this weekend, they feel quite well-rounded in a manner that’s inoffensive in a film with a very specific and singular vision. The creature itself is realised courtesy of a fairly unsophisticated puppet that’s never hugely convincing and yet it exerts a strange and baleful influence over the girls and is unusually effective because it doesn’t communicate with its victims and has clearly come to Earth with one specific purpose. Its lack of anything we might recognise as ‘intelligence’ is oddly disconcerting, a description equally applicable to The Seed itself, a film that punches well above its weight and delivers some decent, if familiar, sci-fi/horror thrills and a pleasingly gloomy final sequence.
The Seed is available now on Shudder
