The Ruins Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 04.06.2008

You'd think horror characters would have learned by now to never trust a German tourist...

Directed by: Carter Smith

Starring:
Jonathan Tucker as Jeff
Jena Malone as Amy
Shawn Ashmore as Eric
Laura Ramsey as Stacy
Joe Anderson as Mathias
Dimitri Baveas as Dimitri



Running Time: 97 min
Rated R for strong violence and gruesome images, language, some sexuality and nudity.

Horror is such a hit-or-miss genre. For every good, intense horror film that comes along like The Descent or Bug, there's three pieces of senseless torture porn like Captivity, Hostel, I Know Who Killed Me that trade in genuine thrills and scares for pointless, mindless carnage. That's not even getting into the way Hollywood has destroyed the once-impressive J-Horror genre, with watered-down, hackneyed renditions like One Missed Call, Pulse, Dark Water, or The Ring 2. With so much unmitigated crap flooding the genre, it's easy to miss when a legitimately good, frightening horror film comes along.

Unfortunately, as hard as it tries and as close as it comes, The Ruins is not quite that film.

After a brief teaser scene showing what might be coming for our heroes, the film opens with two American couples on vacation in Cancún. The two girls, Amy (Malone) and Stacy (Ramsey) are best friends; Amy's boyfriend Jeff (Tucker) is going off to medical school once they get back to America. Stacy's squeeze Eric (Ashmore) is more laid back then Jeff, just there to enjoy the time with his friends. While lounging by the pool, they meet up with German tourist Mathias (Anderson, sporting a very tolerable accent). Mathias tells them about a Mayan ruin off the tourist map that his brother is part of an archeological dig for. After some convincing by Jeff, who wants to see some culture rather than lounging about on the beach, the group sets off, along with a Greek tourist named Dmitri (Baveas) to see the ruins. Upon arriving at the vine-choked structure, the process of which is enough for any sane person to pack it in early, they encounter a group of Mayans who trap them there after Amy steps onto the foliage. It quickly becomes clear--with deadly results--that they aren’t going to be allowed to leave, and they have to face the ruins and the deadly secret living inside of it.

From the get-go, the problems with The Ruins start to emerge. There is, like in many horror films of the last several years, a complete lack of sympathy for some of the characters. Amy comes off as a drunken tramp, as she tries to put the moves on Mathias the night before the trip. Jeff is cheerfully oblivious to Amy’s hesitance to go, and as she lingers the next morning before the trip in the midst of a serious hangover, he seems more interested in not being late then he is in finding out if she’s okay. Eric and Stacy fair somewhat better as they try to look out for their friends’ relationship, and Mathias tries to be a good guy. The most important element of horror films is instilling a sense of sympathy for the characters, and it’s difficult to do so when working with source material like the novel it was based off of. Scott Smith’s horror novel of the same name is far more brutal in terms of the character’s personalities; it’s a wonder, considering Scott wrote the screenplay, that they come off as sympathetic as they do. But it’s still difficult to care about the characters when they do stupid things like continue on despite the taxi driver not wanting to take them out there, or the obvious effort someone made in hiding the path.

Of course, once they get there is when the fun begins, and when the movie picks up. The film is quite raw and doesn’t skimp on the gore. A gunshot wound to the head, though not exceptionally graphic, is still portrayed on-screen; a Mayan child who happens to come in contact with the vines is killed on-screen (a ballsy but tactfully-done move by the filmmakers). A much-needed amputation is performed by virtue of a heavy rock to break the bones, a hunting knife to cut the limb free, and a hot pan to cauterize the wound. The gore manages to be harsh without ever becoming revolting, which is a trick to accomplish, and one director Carter Smith pulls off adequately in his first major film. Both Smiths, writer and director, are smart enough to focus more on the psychological aspects of what the extreme situation they are in is doing to the characters, rather than the situation themselves.

Pursuant to that, the acting is done adequately. The best performances come from Ramsey and Anderson. Ramsey has the most opportunity to show off her acting chops as her character suffers the most, and she plays off Stacy’s growing paranoia and eventual degeneration well. Anderson, who was such a pleasant surprise in last year’s Across the Universe, has far less to do, but pulls off Mathias well as the most three-dimensional character—ironic, as he is the one with the least amount of screen time of the five mains. Jonathon Tucker, who’s dipped into the genre before with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, has the guts to make Jeff flawed while rising above the character’s inherent unlikability as the one take-charge person of the group. Jena Malone is largely wasted as Amy, as there really is no way to make that character one you can like. And Ashmore is really treading water in this film, as Eric simply has little to do other then disagree with Jeff or comfort the girls.

One of the hardest selling points of the film is the evil living in the ruins. Anyone who’s seen a commercial, trailer, movie poster, or any other ad for the film can guess what it is, and there’s no other way to say it then this: the nature of it (no pun intended) is a damn hard sell. However, it’s carried off as well as it can possibly be, and does a good job of rising above the inherent ridiculousness of it. To be fair, the script has some pretty sneaky tricks up its sleeve in regard to the villain’s capabilities, and in terms of a horror nasty, it manages to be far better than it should. Much like The Descent, the nasty is almost secondary in terms of what’s to fear…the true terror is people pushed to the edge. While The Descent pulled it off better, The Ruins could have done it a lot worse then it did.

The final disappointment is the ending. Changed by Smith from his own novel, it is carried off well enough, but stinks of Hollywood tinkering. Where the rest of the film goes for a more independent, gritty feel, the last few minutes are true to the clichéd roadmap of a typical studio horror film. I foresee many crappy direct-to-DVD sequels choking video stores the world over in the next few years, and that’s the final, bad taste left in the viewer’s mouth as they go home.

The 411: While it tries, and the cast does their part admirably, The Ruins is not a film that can truly be called a great horror film. The gore is strong enough, and the focus on the deteriorating relationships between the characters in the face of horror is far preferable to the current trend of horror to show torture scene after torture scene. Unfortunately, the limits of the source material that makes you want to not care and the highly disappointing ending handicap it to the point that it can't be great, it can only manage "decent."

Final Score:  6.5   [ Average ]