Wesley's The Ruins Review

Since I work at Movie Gallery, I not only get three free rentals a day but I also get to check out movies a week before they are released to the general renting public. When I saw The Ruins in the Fed-Ex box of new releases this past week, I figured why not? After all, Scott Smith (the author of the original novel and the screenplay) did write the novel and script for one of my favorite movies ever- A Simple Plan. Well, there was one reason to not check this one out. During one of my after class chats with my film teacher Dr. Everett, he told me that he saw The Ruins and, afterwards, wanted his money back. Dr. Everett had chosen A Simple Plan as a work of study for our Literature and Film course and, after seeing The Ruins, he said that he was ready to write Scott Smith off. Although I did not dislike the movie as much as he did, I can definitely see where he was coming from.

After I finished watching The Ruins really late on the fourth of July, I remember thinking, "What did I just achieve by watching that movie?" To be honest, I couldn't really think of anything. The Ruins is simply a very cynical, mean-spirited horror movie that lasts about an hour and a half and then, just ends. You won't really gain anything from watching it other than a sense of disgust. The movie isn't really scary. It mostly works as just portraying a really awful situation that a couple of kids get into and how it just gets worse and worse as the films goes on. 

That's one thing I'm starting to notice about Scott Smith. First off, this kind of goes back to my Literature and Film class that I previously mentioned. In this class, we read Smith's original A Simple Plan novel and then watched Sam Raimi's brilliant and underrated film adaptation. As we went through this process, most of the class (and my film teacher) came to the conclusion that Smith went too far in his novel with the brutality to the point that it became too hard to care for or identify with its main characters. This was something that was vastly different in the film version. Although things were pretty awful in Raimi's film, the brutality that the characters committed was not as extreme and, no matter how awful some of the decisions they made were, they seemed somehow always justifiable. Also, with A Simple Plan, it seemed like Smith had an overall purpose and meaning for his work. He was trying to show how awful greed was and how it could single handedly destroy average, normal human beings. In The Ruins, Smith puts some teenagers in an awful situation. Brutality and massive amounts of gore ensue. In the end, there really isn't an overall meaning, message, or purpose. It's just people in an awful, screwed up situation. 

Still, The Ruins isn't all that bad. Despite not really caring for the characters (I'll get to that in a second), I was almost always engaged in what was happening to them just because it was really awful, terrible things. So yeah, Smith is at least good at creating screwed up situations. Plus, it was interesting to see the development of the source of evil in the story (I'm not sure if it's a spoiler by this point- just watch the trailers or look at the poster above). There was one plot point that I found particularly clever and actually very creepy (the source of the ringing cell phone... nice job on that). It gave the "predator" of the story more of an animalistic quality. Plus, I liked how it could get inside of the people and the sense paranoia that seemed to gravitate from that situation. My favorite sub plot of film would probably have to be Stacy's (Laura Ramsey) obsession with finding bits of the predator in her and how her paranoia got insanely out of control. The scene where they all wake up to find her outside of the tent trying to rid her body of the parasite was pretty intense and disturbing. 

Despite the movie being engaging from time to time, there were a lot of problems stemming from the film's script. As I stated earlier, the film's probably too fixiated on brutality for it's own good. There's a scene involving a guy's legs being broken with large rocks and then cut off at the bone with a hunting knife while he's still conscious for example. It's probably one of the goriest and most disturbing things I've seen in a film in a very long time (and I've seen a lot of gross movies). It works for shock value but, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really mean anything. It almost just feels like it's there to be disturbing and shocking. While the Stacy paranoia sub plot has it's fair share of shocking and disturbing moments, they at least serve to move the plot forward and feel like an important addition to the story. 

As for other problems, the characters aren't people that I really cared about. Oh, Jeff (Jonathan Tucker), our male lead, is in med school. I guess that means I'm supposed to care about him. It also means he takes control of every situation and is the unofficial leader of the group. Isn't he special? And how about the character of Amy (Jena Malone)? Talk about the most annoying, unintelligent, and grating character I've seen in a horror film in a while. Not only is she a drunk and lose around other men, but she's a freaking moron. Why would you continue to take pictures of Mayan natives after they get aggressive and pull out guns and bow and arrows on you? Seriously, who would do that? Because of that little deal, she got a guy killed. Then, after one of the group gets injured in the ruins, she runs down to the same Mayan locals (who, keep in mind, have just killed one of her friends earlier) for help. Seriously? What the hell is wrong with you? Am I supposed to like you for some reason? Because of that little stunt, she proceeds to get an innocent kid killed. Man, I hated this character. At least I liked Stacy and Eric (Shawn Ashmore), which helped to make that sub plot with the paranoia much more engaging. Mathasis (Joe Anderson) was pretty cool too I guess because he had a cool accent. 

Although the movie has some pretty solid practical effects and gore, the CGI is pretty bad at times. While I could buy the main enemy's CGI for the most part, there were some times when it looked a little iffy (when it was "talking" for example). Also, this movie has one of the worst gun shot CGI effects that I've ever seen in a movie. Why couldn't that have been done practically? Seriously, people have been doing practical gun shot wounds for years. While I'm not the biggest fan of CGI, it's unnecessary CGI like this that I truly despise. It just shows a lack of effort or creativity. 

Overall, The Ruins is not awful. Despite its uninteresting and unidentifiable cast of twenty-somethings, some of the messed up situations that they are put into are fairly engaging from time to time, even if Smith seems to revel in the brutality a little too much. You won't really take anything home from watching this movie but, in all honesty, it's probably better than most of the horror movie trash out there today. Still, after the masterpiece that was A Simple Plan, I expected more. A rental at best.

5/10