"The Ruins" review

The Ruins (2008)

Director: Carter Smith
Writers: Scott B. Smith

Jonathan Tucker ... Jeff McIntire
Jena Malone ... Amy
Laura Ramsey ... Stacy
Shawn Ashmore ... Eric
Joe Anderson ... Mathias
Sergio Calderón ... Lead Mayan

A bunch of fun loving tourists decide to break away from the pack and do something adventurous while vacationing in Mexico. This line of thinking always spells doom for tourists in horror flicks. They hear that there’s a ruin that the tour guides won’t take you to. It never crosses their minds as to why they won’t take them there, just that there’s an old ruin to explore. Once they find it, the natives won’t let them leave. The ruin doesn’t want them to leave either...
“The Ruins” has a standard horror movie set up that I thought was going to lead somewhere interesting. I was hoping for something monstrously evil to be waiting for them in the bowels of the ruins. I’m sorry to tell you that the only thing waiting for the wayward tourists is killer shrubbery. Yes, the vines on the ruins are carnivorous and want to lure idiotic tourists to their death. I don’t think I’ve seen a movie with killer plants before but “The Ruins” treats us to every gory possibility that this monster has to offer. In fact, you might even say that “The Ruins” truly encompasses the intersection between Hollywood and Vine. HAHAHAHA! Oh man, (wiping tears away), I’ve been waiting to use that line ever since I saw this movie.

I will give “The Ruins” some points for its generous helpings of gore. Vines start crawling towards the tourist’s wounded bodies with alarming regularity. As they spend their days and nights fighting off vines at the ruin, they start to snap under the pressure.
*SPOILER ALERT* The scene where the med student amputates the guys legs was particularly disgusting. That was a true orgy of gore. It made me wince with joy.*END SPOILER*

“The Ruins” is trying to be a psychological horror flick as we watch this group of friends crack under vine-filled pressure. It does deliver some good gore scenes and some decent suspense when they are crawling around the belly of the ruins.

But overall I didn’t feel that there was a sufficient payoff with this movie. I’m a big monster fan and proud of it. There should have been some sort of beast that the vines were attached to. I needed one to be waiting in those ruins. Instead I got a lot of hungry plants.

Why couldn’t they have burned the plants? Poisoned them? Whipped out the weed whacker? Break out the lawnmower? Show those weeds who’s boss of these ruins. Letting plants get the better of you is a sorry way to die in a horror flick. But getting your head ripped off and then thrown down the steps of the ruins by a slobbering beast, now that’s how a man wants to go out.

SCORE: 2.5 out of 4 killer weeds