Movie Review: The Ruins

The Ruins (2008) 

Directed by Carter Smith 

Written by Scott Smith 

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

Release Date April 4th, 2008

Published April 3rd, 2008 

For the past couple of years we have been saddled with horror porn assaulting moviegoers across the country with the ugliest possible images sick minds could think to film. This has served to both cause many critics to wretch uncontrollably and to distract critics from the other forms of junk horror being dumped onto the other screens. Take for instance The Ruins a goofball horror flick too squeamish to be horror porn but not smart enough or wild enough to be in the intellectual vain of Saw or the freewheeling thrills of Nightmare on Elm Street. Rather, The Ruins settles in to that awkward middle ground inhabited by junk horror like The Ring and The Grudge and other such ’The’ horror films.

Jonathan Tucker stars in The Ruins as Jeff a med student on vacation with his girlfriend Jenny (Jena Malone), her best friend Stacy (Laura Ramsey), and Stacy's boyfriend Eric (Shawn Ashmore). Together they have spent the week lounging by the pool and getting drunker and drunker. On their last day at this Mexican resort they have been enticed by a fellow traveler named Mathias (John Anderson) to get away from the drinks and the pool and get some culture. Mathias has a map to some ancient ruins that is not on any of the sanctioned maps of the countryside.

They will journey deep into the jungle where Mathias expects his brother will be waiting for them. The trip is not all that arduous, they find the ruins with little challenge. However, once they arrive at the ruins the tourists find themselves surrounded by locals who won’t let them leave. Their only option is to climb to the top of the ruins and hope the locals will leave. When the locals refuse to follow them and instead begin to quarantine the area, our heroes quickly realize there is something very wrong with these ruins. The vines and weeds that surround the the giant temple are coming to life and soon the ancient curse will reveal itself.

If we wanted to try and apply a meaning to The Ruins, perhaps, we could infer that he weeds that surround the ruins and begin sucking bodies into them, hissing at our heroes, crawling into and out of their bodies, could be seen as some kind of drug metaphor. The movie kind of reminded me of those extremely lame and heavy-handed ONDCP ads that show kids burning their possessions or building weed cocoons and emerging as middle aged fat guys. It's possible that the makers of The Ruins could be positing an anti-pot message that says if you smoke weed it invades your entire body, eating you from the inside out but that's a big stretch. Nothing in the movie indicates that anything means anything beyond being kind of gross. 

The Ruins is based on a novel by Scott B. Smith, and directed by Carter Smith and is typical of the junk horror genre that has delivered movies like Turistas or Cabin Fever. It features some of the same cardboard characters, the same shallow anti-American stereotypes, and the same Clearasil splashed teen heartthrobs who seem to gravitate toward death by serial killer or supernatural force in movies like this. There is absolutely nothing special, memorable, or remotely interesting in The Ruins. The film enacts a familiar plot in the most basic way, provides a couple of grossout moments and is over so fast you will likely forget you saw it before you get to your car.