The Seed is a real mixed bag of a Shudder original. If they cut 30 to 45 minutes out of it and just made it a short film, it’d have helped a great deal. But I can’t help but enjoy the second half so much more than the wobbly first. It’s a tough one but I came down on three stars for the execution.

The flick is about a trio of vacuous knobheaded girls who go to an elaborate desert house to watch (and livestream) a once-in-a-lifetime meteor shower. A shower that deposit a gooey messy THING in their pool. And it grows… and starts to take over their minds and bodies. Or something.

The first half of this film is a kind of slow horror comedy that mistakes watching a trio of ninnies fuss and fret idiotically over this mysterious thing that fell from space. It’s not particularly funny once you get the joke nor is it a particularly good indictment of social media celebrity. If that’s what it was trying to do.

But the second half, once the actual horror starts to pop off, is a lot of fun. Gooey, drippy, bloody, body horror puppet hentai psychedelia kind of horror… not overly scary, but genuinely splattery and skin-crawly body horror fun in a way that splattery fun movies are fun. I was digging on its commitment to the bit and wondering just how bubbly crude it was gonna get.

The alien itself is a very old school practical puppet. It’s not always great but I enjoyed the very 80s feel. You know, back when ghoulies and critters roamed the multiplex. It’s not on that level and never tries to be, but it reminded me of it. Good old practical effects and makeup.

Certainly if you don’t have the patience for the first act and have zero interest in splattery fun kind of gore (with puppets), this isn’t for you. I think good old fashioned horror fans who don’t need their horror elevated will have reasonable amounts of fun though.

Score: 75