The Ruins (2008) Directed by Carter Smith
I saw this movie probably a week after it came out on DVD, and since then I completely forgot about it. I was home sick the other day and I was flipping through the HBO and Cinemax channels and stumbled across it. I remember liking the movie and since I was nursing a fever I figured what else am I going to do? So I gave it a second viewing, here we go!
Two American couples (Jeff & Amy, Eric & Stacy) meet a German tourist named Matthias on a trip to Mexico. They quickly decided to help Matthias search for his brother Heinrich whom met an archeologist and decided to follow her on her trip to a Mayan ruin. They make for the ruins with Dimitri, Matthias’s friend.
They reach the ruins in the thick jungle and are approached by Mayan villagers who don’t speak English, of course. Also none of the college-aged people know how to speak Spanish, so that’s really helpful. The Mayans are screaming things in Spanish, while the group tries to talk to them. Amy backs into some ivy looking plant and the Mayans go ape shit screaming at her. Dimitri tries to settle them down and he gets a bullet to the head. The rest of the group runs up the ruins to escape.
At the top they hear a noise down a giant shaft, Matthias is sure its his brother’s ringtone so they lower him down with a rope. Of course the rope breaks, because who knows how long that thing has been there…smart. Matthias crashes to the bottom and is silent. . Stacy gets lowered into the shaft to check on Matthias, she jumps the last 10 feet and cuts herself on broken glass. Matthias is down there
And he’s now paralyzed. Amy and Jeff go down and try to talk to the Mayans again, why? I don’t know! It seems if someone shot my friend in the face, I’d stop trying to negotiate with them. Amy throws a clump of the vines at a little boy, who is quickly shot after they touched him. They realize they are afraid of the vines and won’t let them go because they touched them. They make a backboard to send down and bring Matthias back. The girls go down the shaft and put Matthias on the board.
The next morning Stacy notices that some of the vine has burrowed into her wound from the glass, she freaks out and they get the vine out of her leg. Matthias has also had his lower legs eaten down to the bone from the vines. Now they realize the vines are predatory and the Mayans have salted the ground around the ruins. Matthias is now in bad shape and they have to amputate his legs. This scene is pretty brutal where they have use a rock to break the bone, and a cast iron frying pan to cauterize the wound. I’m not sure when they realize this, but the vines can replicate noises much like a parrot. Stacy thinks Eric cheats on her with Amy because she can hear moaning, which is probably made by the vines. While they argue about this the vines choke out Matthias.
They realize again in the morning that the vines are still crawling inside Stacy so they cut them out again. After the long arduous process they relax for a bit then they realize that Stacy has a vine in her face that seemingly burrows into her brain. Stacy awakens later paranoid that the vines are still in her and starts slashing herself apart. Jeff tries to stop her and she cuts his hand open. Eric, in one of the dumbest ideas of all time tries to do the same and she buries the knife in his chest, of course he dies…because he’s an idiot.
Jeff realizes that they will likely die so he comes up with a plan, smears blood on Stacy’s face and he carries her down to the Mayans. He lays Stacy in the dirt and talks to the Mayans talking about what he wanted to do with his life, basically distracting the group. They follow him and then he yells Stacy’s name, she gets up and sprints to the jungle. They shoot Jeff with arrows and he dies. Stacy gets chased by the Mayans and makes it to a Jeep and escapes.
There are alternate endings that I remember, one is that they show her face and you can see the vines wiggling under his skin. The other adds more to it, a caretaker at a graveyard whistles a song that is replicated by Stacy’s grave, of course it’s the plants. The version I watched on HBO was the theatrical ending where she escapes, unaffected.
This movie was rather fast; I think it is like an hour and a half, tops. I kind of enjoyed that; it got to the point and was entertaining the entire time. Some of the parts were just idiotic, like following a stranger into a Mexican jungle and Eric trying to get Amy to stop cutting herself after she already cut Jeff. It made me laugh at the stupidity of the group not knowing Spanish, even enough to talk down the Mayans. The idea of the killer plants was kind of cool, I didn’t know what to expect watching this the first time and I was happy that it was something different. The gore is pretty good in this and the CGI plants were alright, I’ve seen worse. The multiple endings is always odd to me, just pick one and go with it. I like the ending with the vines wiggling in her face, because it is not the typical happy ending that every movie has. All in all, if you’re looking for something different that isn’t terrible, watch it. If you are looking for something amazing that will change your views on horror, look somewhere else. I give The Ruins a C+. Like I said the gore was nice, its decently shot, but the characters are dull and those idiotic moments just made me laugh.
