The Ruins (2008) Review

With No Mans Sky released I’ve been spending most of my time on that over the last week and not watched any horror films at all. So with a lazy Sunday planned I remembered @dvdinfatuation posted about a film called The Ruins, plants attacking people, how could that not be good?

Director: Carter Smith

Writers: Scott B. Smith (screenplay), Scott B. Smith (novel) (as Scott Smith)

Stars: Shawn Ashmore, Jena Malone, Jonathan Tucker

Budget: $8,000,000 (estimated)

Run Time: 93 minutes

 

A bunch of unlikable students on holiday in Mexico meet a man with an unconvincing German accent, he tells them he’s off to see his brother who is on an archaeological dig in the jungle. Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) tired of sitting around drinking and doing nothing else decides to go with Matias (Joe Anderson) to the dig site. He convinces his cheating girlfriend Amy (Jena Malone), her friend Stacy (Laura Ramsey) and her boyfriend Eric (Shawn Ashmore) to go with him.

What could possibly go wrong when a bunch of youths go to an ancient temple in the jungle that no one has ever heard of? Luckily for us a hell of a lot.

A temple noone’s ever heard of lets go there!

On their arrival there they stand in awe of the pretty large temple. However this moment of wonder is ended when a group of people attack them, they end one of them there and then, chasing the rest onto the temple. For some reason these people won’t let them leave and they also salt the ground around the temple.

With not many options available things start to get worse and worse and we’re treated to a few pretty gory scenes as they struggle to survive an attack from the plants on the temple. Amy seems to get even more annoying as the film goes on and everything leads to one final plan to allow some of them to escape the plants, temple and the people keeping them there.

I was just shaving my legs and I slipped

The Good

• Couple of gory scenes involving rocks and self surgery.
• Jeff is reasonably likable if a bit gullible.
• The premise of the film is great, there’s not enough films featuring crazy plants attacking people.
• I liked the build up and pace of the film, we’re slowly introduced to the characters and despite them for the most part being annoying it’s a nice build right to the end.
• The ending was good and I don’t think I’d have predicted the way things played out.

The Bad

• I read that this film had an over abundance of gore, now there was a couple of gory scenes but overall there should have been some more cooler deaths.
• Matias’ German accent was pretty poor.
• Could argue that some of the more annoying characters stick around for too long.
• I realise they have other things to worry about but noone complains of being hungry or thirsty which was a bit odd.

I didn’t realise this was a book as well, I did like this film but I can imagine the story is better suited to book than film. It’s a good film to watch if there’s not much else on but it’s not one I’d watch again in a hurry or ever. In short if you’re having a lazy film day you won’t regret watching this one.

Overall Score – 6.5/10