The Ruins

Every time someone goes on vacation in a movie, something horrible happens. It’s a wonder why we don’t all just stay home and barbecue on the deck for a few days instead of heading off to certain doom.

Jeff (Jonathan Tucker), Amy (Jena Malone), Stacy (Laura Ramsey) and Eric (Shawn Ashmore) are four young Americans on a vacation to Mexico. Like all vacations to exotic locales you see in the movies, it’s full of drinking and women wearing skimpy bikinis, but paradise is lost when they are convinced by a fellow traveler, Mathias (Joe Anderson), to check out a top secret ancient temple in the middle of the jungle (Yeah, who wants to hang around the pool with scantily clad women and ample alcohol when you can hike through the mosquito infested jungle to some archeological dig that isn’t even on a normal map? Maybe we’ll even see snakes!).

Before you can say, “Don’t go in there!,” the group finds themselves surrounded by angry locals, and take shelter atop the temple. Then, they start to realize the temple is full of evil flowers and vines that want to suck their blood (I guess this is the supply depot for the Little Shop of Horrors).

Can the gang escape, or will they meet their maker among the ruins?

The Ruins is nothing special or shocking. Writer Scott Smith (who also wrote the novel this movie is based upon) seems to lack any desire to move the story forward. We never learn much about the characters and they never seem all that interested in figuring out what is happening around them. It feels like a movie that just wants to gross us out a few times and call it entertainment.

Director Carter Smith makes the most of the bloody elements in the movie, like when members of the group get injured and need medical assistance, but some gore does not make a movie frightening all on its own. It is more gore for gore’s sake just there to shock us momentarily and try to keep the audience awake for another few minutes. Smith gets a reaction out of us, but for what purpose and how does it serve the movie?

Sadly, the audience is left laughing more than screaming in terror, but you might be screaming if that last scene in The Ruins was an attempt to set us up for The Ruins 2.

The Ruins is rated R for strong violence and gruesome images, language, some sexuality and nudity.