THE SEED (REVIEW)

Dir. Sam Walker

Reviewer. Martyn Wakefield

ERASERHEAD meets SOCIETY in Sam Walker's brilliant throwback to the best of 80s body horror. When three social media absorbed women head to a remote location for a glamour shoot, they come into contact with an extra-terrestrial. Unfortunately for them, this is more David Cronenberg than Stephen Spielberg as the bear like creature becomes a sexual awakening for the women.

THE SEED is a slow burner that throws off the scent of what it wants to be very early on but with good grace hits like a hammer to the face at the midway point as the true inhibitions of the alien are made clear. Falling somewhere between SPECIES and UNDER THE SKIN, the gratious sex scenes are not the smut driven teenage fantasies but instead become an artistic clusterfuck of intersliced visions expressing not only the event but the feeling and emotion overwhelemd by the house sitters.

Lucy Martin, Chelsea Edge and Sophie Vavasseur play the parts annoyingly well giving enough balance between egomaniac and empathetic to horrifyingly graphic ends with Edge giving a full tour de force echoing the great Marilyn Burns amidst all the chaos unfolding around her.

But the real star is the effects work that brings this all to life and frays away from modern compulsions in favour for homage to history giving us tastes of Frank Henenlotter and Brian Yuzna and coming out with something just as enjoyable and cult status worthy as the body horror movies of the 80s. THE SEED is a must see for any fan of the genre that doesn't take itself too seriously but gets under the skin enough to make you question the next meteor shower that blasts through the sky.