The Ruins, directed by Carter Smith, USA 2008 Reviewed by James 4/7/08
So four teenagers walk into a bar… and get brutally murdered. It’s an old joke. This time the bar is a ruined temple in Mexico. They are lead there by a German guy, whose looking for his brother. The temple is covered with this weird plant. The teenagers get there and accosted by gun-toting Mayans. The Mayans drive them up into the Temple and shoot anyone who tries to leave.
The plants kill people. That much is in the previews, but I won’t say too much more. The movie has some real horror to it, and it all stems from the nature of the plants. I can’t remember any recent horror movie moment that filled me with as much dread as one particular revelation in this one. You’ll know what I’m talking about it when you see it.
I did not really care at all about the teenagers. They’re Jena Malone, Ice Man from the X-Men, a girl who gets naked briefly and gratuitously, beautiful as she is, and a guy who develops a speech impediment halfway through the movie. They are pretty typical white human teenagers. Go to Penn State you get used to these kinds of people pretty quick. The movie spends some perfunctory scenes establishing them. Yes, they are human and they need to be loved, just like everybody else does. But instead they are killed by plants.
The ending is really bad. Very abrupt, anticlimatic, and unsatisfying. The writer, Scott Smith, adapting his own novel, couldn’t think of anywhere to go after he exhausted all his horrific plant imagery. So whiz, bang, boom, everyone save one is killed, and quick cut to a scene of no, gasp, some more teenagers on their way to the ruins. Will the madness never end? Bah.
Go if you like gruesome horror.
Rating: 3 out of 5 screens
