Ruins Mayan Style

Plants &; Chicks Shriek while we're Served Gore-on-a-Stick
by
Morgan P Salvo

Yep, The Ruins gets ruined, taking a huge turn for the worse—but for the characters, not the audience. I actually let it bypass my “despise-o-meter” entirely.It starts off formulaic: the four main vacationing characters (med student, geek-girl, slut, surfer-dude) are all white, yuppified and overtly nauseating, making you wish they could be killed within seconds. But oddly enough the director (first-timer Carter Smith) doesn’t waste a bunch of time forcing these people down your throat and had the foresight to add some gratuitous nudity almost immediately.
The tourists receive an invitation to some Mayan ruins from a German guy to accompany his brother at an archaeological site. When they arrive at the secretive ruins trouble is lurking. Things change and the movie actually shows some merit in originality. Appearing from nowhere, villagers force the hapless vacationers to ascend the ivy covered steps, at either bow & arrow or gun point, to be sacrificed.
The first kill is impressive.
What transpires is survival. Atop the once renowned temple is a big excavation hole, resembling a well, a lot of dead bodies strewn around, empty tents, creeping vines and the sound of hidden cell phones going off, but definitely no escape route. The armed villagers have camped at the base making sure.

Surprisingly, the characters suddenly don’t seem to deserve to die. Their obnoxiousness subsides and you actually start feeling their pain. Knowing they are totally doomed, the desperate vacationers expressing hope is actually kind of touching.
Then there are the vines. They creep into your skin if you cut yourself or haul you off if you die. Their little rosy-red blossoms can recreate any sound they want (cell phone, wind, chick going nuts etc).
The horror comes from the survivors themselves, not the possessed vines and singing blossoms. The characters inflict pain and terror on each other through their blunders, and misguided decisions making it more realistic.
The fact that the evil power surrounding the ruins is never explained is actually okay because if they did try and reason it out, it would be ludicrous and stupid. It’s safer this way because it just IS---and like the characters, the audience has to take it at face value. “Ruins” has a ton of blood and is no slouch on the gore. Picture a science-project dissection with a hunting knife and vines crawling under the skin. There is the mandatory booze and hot-skillet amputation scene. And one transfer-to-makeshift-stretcher scene to save the guy with a broken back that has to be one of the most realistic ever. It looks like it hurts. My horror movie acting award goes to Laura Ramsey (Stacy) whose transformation from goofy blonde to demented paranoid psychopath is outstanding. Insanity becomes her pastime.
Horror movies can be my favorite form of comedy, but usually this specific genre (hostages in foreign counties) I categorize as dubious. Ruins is not a great movie by any standards, but it manages to paint a surreal yet vulnerable story of fearful hopelessness and tragic doom that didn’t have me laughing. Well, not as much as usual.

The Ruins

Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone, Shawn Ashmore, Laura Ramsey
Directed by: Carter Smith
 2 3/4 stars