3 out of 5

Directed by: Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund

Think you’ve seen every possible cabin-in-the-woods variant out there?  …You have.  Wither offers absolutely nothing new to that thin template, but it does bring some horror-flick gusto, and enough internal logic to carry you through its 95 splatterful minutes.

The namedrop associated here, most often, is Evil Dead, and directors Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund definitely nab the “something evil awoken in the woods” premise, and maybe Raimi’s jittery lensing, but the former is hardly unique to ED, and the latter is more shakycam than Sam’s cartoonish loop-de-loops.  Instead, I got more of an early Romero / TCM vibe from the gritty cinematography (whether digitally done or actually on film, the duo did a great job of mimicking 70s era footage), and the gore / zombos were much more of the filthy Fulci variety, which is certainly a compliment.  (Our boys love their shotgun head wounds, gotta tell ya.)

…And a criticism mentioned is female-centric violence, which, yes, happens, but there’s honestly less of a sexualized focus to the flick than its American counterparts, and the violence inflicted doesn’t seem particularly huh-huh-hit-the-girl gross as a result; rather, it just seems like people freaking out and responding freaked-outedly at whomever happens to be trying to gnaw on them.

Now, to be clear, though I’ve complimented and defended, there is zero plot in Wither, and even less attempts at pretending like there’s ‘mythology’ than usual.  Young adults have a vague plan to spend a weekend at a house in the woods; someone ventures into a basement (of course); something evil is unleashed.  There’s your old man who knows more about what’s going on than the young adults, but not really; he’s just there to encourage everyone to kill the zombies – he has nothing to add otherwise.  And the flick tosses out some details without purpose, like the cabin / cottage having three entrance doors next to each other (?) and some ‘burn them with fire’ advice that hardly seems relevant.  However, despite the story emptiness, I was continually kept addled (in a positive fashion) with characters responding – in context – with intelligence: trying to leave the house but acknowledging that the woods, in the rain, weren’t a great place into which to escape; actually calling the police; getting over the “we can’t kill our friends!” dilemma rather quickly.  Because Wither’s makers seemed to understand that energy is the thing, here, and dumb character decisions actually end up killing a lot of energy in fright flicks, so by keeping everyone semi-thoughtfully moving, it kept me watching.

Not necessarily enough to proclaim this as an instant watch, but it’s definitely a notch above yer average horror flick, especially given its bare bones, generic setup.