November 14, 2018
Written by: Scott B. Smith
Starring: Shawn Ashmore, Jena Malone, Jonathan Tucker
Budget: $8,000,000
Quote: "We're being quarantined here. We are being kept here to die!"... "This doesn't happen! Four Americans on a vacation don't just disappear!"
Trivia: Though the film takes place in Mexico during the summer, it was shot primarily in Australia during the winter. Heavy coats were provided for the actors in between takes, and water and olive oil had to be sprayed onto their bodies to simulate sweat.
I didn't get a chance to see The Ruins when it first came out and had absolutely no expectations when I finally watched it. I have to say, I was underwhelmed. It begins by building a cool atmosphere and we get a brief look into the psychology of the characters (that will no doubt come to bite them later on). The setting of the ruins themselves are well made and I believed throughout the movie that the film was shot in the jungles of Mexico and not Australia. However, when it is finally discovered that the monster is a bunch of plants, I couldn't help but ask the screen, "Really? The plants?" There is so much mysterious and possibly terrifying about the Maya and their ruins that I was hoping for some cool monster or something, but no, all we get is vines. That being said, there are so very brutal moments that were painful to watch. What ended up being more entertaining was the psychological toll the plants have on the characters who begin to destroy each other. However, I still cannot get over that plants are the bad guys. As disappointing as the wind in Shyamalan's The Happening which came out the same year (if you haven't seen it, sorry for the spoiler, but count yourself lucky that you don't have to sit through it). Also, you have girls in bikinis throughout the entire movie and no one gets topless? I don't get that either.
While two couples are partying at some Mexican resort, they meet a German guy who convinces them all to go the next day to visit some Mayan ruin that his archaeologist brother is looking at. When they get to the ruins they are surrounded by a bunch of Mayan people and forced to go up on top of the ruin at gunpoint. While up there, the German guy breaks his leg falling down an archaeological shaft. The girls go to to lift him out of the shaft and here they discover that the viney plants that cover the ruins can imitate any noise they hear and that that plants are trying to feed on them. They get out but the German guy's legs are in bad shape and one of the guys has to amputate and cauterize his legs using only a rock, a knife, and a frying pan. Also, one of the plants has crawled inside one of the girl's legs and now it has to be cut out of her (there ends up being like four feet of vine in there). From here it gets worse: The vines carry off the German guy's legs and then suffocate him. The vine-leg girl goes nuts and starts cutting herself up before accidentally killing her boyfriend. She then begs the remaining couple to kill her, which they do as a mercy (three down, two to go for those keeping track). Finally, the remaining couple gets an idea to trick the Mayans which are still surrounding the temple. They cover the girl in blood, making it look like she is dead, and place her in front of the temple while the guy runs the other way causing them follow him before killing him and chasing the girl who manages to get to the car and get away.
In the middle of the first decade of the 2000s (there has got to be a better name for this period?) there were a handful of similar films that focused on middle class college-age kids going to another part of the world and horrible things happen to them. This sub-sub-genre (maybe there should be another one or two subs) seems to have been popularized in 2005 with the terrifying The Descent and the gross out fest Hostel. Both spawned sequels and both made a ton of money! The Ruins seems to have hoped to follow in these films' footsteps in both the movie's theme and hopefully its success. The Ruins was a commercial success, but I don't feel it lived up to either of the other 2005 movies. While The Ruins had some really brutal moments, it didn't have the plot twist or the excessive gore of Hostel (I think this movie helped to popularize the term torture porn, a not completely unfair assessment of the movie). Neither did The Ruins have great monsters or utilized the terrifying setting the way The Descent did. What we're left with is a handful of twenty somethings on top of a pyramid being attacked by plants.
As mentioned, The Ruins does not have Hostel levels of gore, but it is very gory nonetheless. The hardest scene to watch is the amputation/cauterization scene. It is really hard not to empathize with the character as his leg bones are broken with a rock, his legs cut off with a handheld knife, and finally the wound cauterized with the bottom of a heated up frying pan. The filmmakers did not dwell on the visuals during this part but they certainly show enough of the carnage to shock the viewer. It is absolutely disgusting. The rest of the time the camera focuses on the pain on the victim's face or the nervous excitement on the pseudo-surgeon's face (does he seem to enjoy this?). The pseudo-surgeon has another gross out scene when he cuts open the women's leg and fishes around inside with his fingers for the vine to take out. The pulling out of the vine is a image that will certainly stay with most viewers. Finally, the scene where the vine girl is cutting herself is another scene where the filmmakers near Hostel gore territory (near, but never get there... thankfully). It is the back image of this beautiful girl in white underwear and top before she turns around to reveal the carnage that she has done to her own body. The blood reds juxtaposed next to the whiteness of her skin and clothing is an unforgettable image that will make its way onto posters, etc.
I also liked the psychological horror moments that the film begins to explore and I feel a bigger emphasis on this could've made for a better movie. Unfortunately the filmmakers chose to gloss over these aspects. At one point in the film, the vine girl begins to hallucinate as the vines take over her mind. She imagines that her boyfriend is screwing her friend in an intense scene. The hallucinations are never further explored beyond this though (in all fairness she does die not too long after this). Then there is the possible psychosis of the pseudo-surgeon. He keeps pushing the group into dangerous surgery with a zeal that makes the viewer wonder if he might be off in some way himself. Later he lies to the girls that the German guy couldn't feel anything through the "surgery" as he was passed out, a lie they argue against having heard the German screaming the entire time. Maybe this was a red herring on the part of the filmmakers because the viewer's suspicion is countered in the end as he selflessly sacrifices himself to save his girlfriend. The vines cannot really make for a great monster so I was hoping the filmmakers would look into the darkness of man's heart to supplement the vines' scariness.
When all is said and done, the movie was not a terrible horror flick. I certainly have seen a lot worse movies. However, aside from the gore moments, the film is largely forgettable. There is a sequel that I will probably never watch as I am apt to agree with Leo Goldsmith in his Reverse Shot review of the movie, when he charged that the film was "so bereft of creativity that it fails even to deliver to its base--teenage boys--the ghouls and boobs they so desperately want to see."
...I've said my piece, what say you?
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