The Ruins

Watch stupid people die

2008

Review: April 18, 2008

Director: Carter Smith

Starring: Jena Malone, Jonathan Tucker, Shawn Ashmore, Laura Ramsey, Joe Anderson

Yes!

THE SETUP:

Four American tourists go off the wrong unbeaten path.

DISCUSSION:

I had little interest in this movie until a friend of mine said she had read the book and found it “quite horrifying,” then reviews came out saying it was pretty good and—there ya go, I was hooked. Plus I like seeing dumb Americans suffer.

We open with our four protagonists on the beach in Mexico. There’s Jeff and Amy, the brunettes, and Eric and Stacy, the blondes. We know that Amy is going to be our primary character because she’s the only actor name we recognize. They meet this German, Matthias, who tells them that he is going out to these Mayan ruins the next day. We find out that the women amongst the group have not wanted to leave the hotel and beach the entire vacation thus far, while the men have wanted to “get some culture” and see some local ruins. The group becomes interested in going when they learn that these ruins are off the map and as yet “undiscovered, VIP only.” I’m fascinated by this phenomena, which one recognizes from everyday life, of people who are not interested in something that others have seen before, great as it may be, but are interested in something that may be far less good, but has been seen by fewer human eyes. I’ll leave you to conjecture what it all might mean.

So they’re all set to go the next day, but first, a strange little bit in which Jeff goes to bed, leaving the drunk and ready to party Amy on the beach. She dances with and kisses the German, until Stacy intervenes. I find it curious that the movie would set up our heroine as… this kind of person, but we’ll soon find out that, yeah, she’s pretty all-round horrid.

So they catch a bus to a town, where they get a taxi. Hateful Amy takes “anthropological” pictures of some local kids without asking [because she’s, like, into photographeeee]. They drive out to this place where they find two jeeps that look like they’ve been there for some time. Hmm, I guess these four have never seen a horror movie before. So they tramp off through the jungle, Amy whining “Why did we leave the hotel, again?”

They come to this clearing around an overgrown Mayan pyramid. If you’ve ever driven around the Yucatan you may know that there are a TON of still-buried pyramids just hangin’ around, which kind of blows my mind. This one, I’m afraid, looks rather like something from a Mexican theme restaurant, with nice, deep, even stairs, but we know what it’s supposed to mean. Anyway, no sooner are they close to the temple when a Mexican man comes out and screams at them. He is soon joined by others, and they have machetes and guns. Now here is the moment when I personally went from finding Amy a whiny, dumb narcissist, to thinking she was a whiny, dumb narcissist with no redeeming value whatsoever. While the guys are screaming at them in a language they don’t understand, and waving their knives and guns threateningly, Amy decides that maybe it would be good to take a picture of them! You know, what happened on my vacation. She takes one, is screamed at, doesn’t learn, and takes another, whereupon the extra German tourist takes the camera, and before you know it, is shot in the head. Amy is all “Like, oh my God!” as you can imagine, and we have time to reflect on how the extra German was there clearly just so someone could die, but without sacrificing any of our main characters.

So they all run to the top of the pyramid, and realize that they are trapped. So it's all bicker-bicker about how they can't get a cell signal, when they hear a Mathias' brother's phone ringing, down in the pyramid. If you're wondering how they can't get a signal at the top of a pyramid, yet one buried within numerous feet of solid rock can, I am happy to report that the movie comes up with a good explanation for it later. So they lower Mathias, but the rope snaps and he breaks his back, then they have to send the women down after him, since the men are stronger and needed to lower/raise them. Amy continues her hateful streak as she is only too happy to see Stacy go down, but freaks when it's her turn. Anyway, things go from bad to worse to oh-my-god-really-bad to HOLY HELL!

SPOILERS > > >
Not really a spoiler if you saw the trailer, but the vines that surround the pyramid are mobile and bloodthirsty. There's a pretty shocking moment when Amy, curse of mankind, throws a piece of the vine, which hits a young Mexican boy. The natives shoot the boy in the head, and that's when the Americans realize that they are being quarantined and will be trapped there until they die.

Okay, highlights. I got a huge evil guffaw out of when the ladies have to lift Mathias, who has broken his back, you recall, onto a stretcher, and you hear these awful bone crunches. The two women have to go into a small, vine-covered chamber within the pyramid to retrieve the phone, and that's where they find that—it's the vines making the sound! They can imitate sounds that they hear. The women are viciously attacked and finally make it out, screaming and hysterical, and doofus Jeff asks "Amy, are you okay?" That's like my favorite thing. When someone is panicked and bloody and screaming or whatever, and someone asks them "Are you all right?" Jeff soon after says "Four Americans on a vacation don't just disappear!" and Amy, soon after they are forced to amputate what's left of Mathias' legs because the vine has grow into his wounds, shouts my very favorite line: "This is SO not okay!"

It continues. I was surprised that the vines don't just kill them, or lie dormant for such long periods, but I guess they need to drag it out or we wouldn't have a movie. What I'm saying is that most of the movie is bickering and human problems and not as much vine-attack as one might expect. It is surprisingly gory. In the end, one of the characters manages to escape, continuing their horrid narcissism in potentially bringing the vines out of the protected area and into contact with the rest of mankind. This is apparently a change from the book, wherein all the characters die on the pyramid. I read a synopsis, and it sounds like a number of other changes were made, most notably that the vines were made considerably less "intelligent," as in the book they are doing things like covering up signs that warn people away from the ruins [they can read!] and vocalizing much more, replaying hurtful comments the tourists made in order to play them against each other—the sorts of things that don't seem as obviously problematic on the page. There is this whole thing with a sort of mold from the vine growing on their clothing, which must have been in the book, but goes nowhere here. Ah well, that's about it.
< < < SPOILERS END

It was a fine enough horror movie. I'm really curious about this whole trend in current horror to have horrible characters who represent "typical" Americans as horrid, coddled, entitled and WAY STUPID narcissists. What intrigues me is that—the people in the movie ARE the target audience for the film, which makes me think that these movies attempt to tap into some vein of American self-loathing, that people get some enjoyment from watching people LIKE THEMSELVES get tortured and die. I suspect there's some level of "Oh yeah, we're all just horrible, xenophobic American's ha, ha" attitude amongst the target audience, who secretly blame themselves for their reliance on gadgets, their ignorance and insensitivity foreign cultures, their general party-minded stupidity, and they get a sense of—I don't know, being grounded? Realistic?—by seeing people like themselves get the punishment they feel they deserve? I don't have the answer, but the whole phenomena is rather fascinating.

Anyway, this was perfect for me on a rainy afternoon. I wouldn't expect much more from it than amusing horror time-killer, but you know, the world needs amusing horror time-killer, and this is better than some.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

If you feel like watching stupid Americans die.