Hailed by many as the new (or next) EVIL DEAD, WITHER turned out to be a bit of a let down as its conclusion and end credits withered away. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed this. Just not nearly as much as I had anticipated. Where shall I begin?
Without a doubt, WITHER was pretty well done considering the low budget. The acting was decent. The setting was cool. The gore effects were better than expected. But that's about where it stops. The story was too simple and the characters were not given enough...not sure of the word I am looking for...depth, maybe? There just wasn't much of a back story in general. The actors did good with what they were given. The finale was...well, if you blinked you may have missed it. Nonexistent for the most part.
This really had a chance to be great, but instead it withered along the way in becoming just average. I promise I won't use the word "withered" again in this review, but it's damn hard not to! Overall a decent film. Much better than most low budget horrors these days, if only the story would have been told a bit better. And the death scenes could have been a little more creative. The ending is the biggest let down of all though, in my eyes.
Good acting. Good setting. Great gore effects. Limp story. Lame ending. Still worth a view. Just don't expect this to be up to par with the original EVIL DEAD, because if you do, you will be sadly let down. EVIL DEAD set the standard for how to make a scary, no budget horror film. Hopefully, if a WITHER 2 is somewhere on the horizon, a bigger budget and better storytelling will emerge and just maybe we will get the Swedish equivalent of DEAD BY DAWN: THE EVIL DEAD II. Just maybe...
