CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: THE RUINS

(The scene is the top of an ancient pyramid in the jungles of Mexico. L. L. SOARES stands at the mouth of what appears to be a deep well, looking down into the darkness.)

LS: Michael, you down there?

(The only sound is the trilling of a cell phone coming from below.)

LS: Oh well, I guess I'm doing this one by myself.

(LS looks over the side of the pyramid, down at natives circling the bottom of the temple. They are looking up at him, waving guns. One man has a bow and arrows. Another guy holds up a sign that says, "Got Milk?")

LS: It doesn't look like they're going to let me out of here anytime soon. So I might as well use this time to talk about the new horror film, THE RUINS.

I liked the trailer for this one, but you can never trust trailers. When this movie began, I figured it would be a disappointment (especially since it had not been screened beforehand for any critics - usually a bad sign). This one starts out like too many other "Teens go to another country and get in danger" movies. TURISTAS (from 2006) came to mind, where a bunch of kids vacationing in a South American country follow some locals into the jungle and get trapped in an organ-harvesting scheme. THE RUINS starts out similarly, with a group of kids vacationing in Mexico going along with a friendly German guy named Mathias, who they meet at a resort, into the jungle to see the ruins of an ancient Mayan pyramid/temple that's far from the usual sight-seeing tours (it's not on any map, but somehow the German guy has a "special map" he got from his brother, an archeologist who's doing a "special dig"). However, despite the weak beginning, I thought that THE RUINS went in some very interesting directions.

Once they finally get to the temple, a group of locals uses violence in the form of guns and bows and arrows to keep them there. The natives appear to be descendents of the Mayans, since they speak neither English nor Spanish, and they treat the entire thing like some kind of arcane ritual. The kids find themselves forced to go up to the top of the pyramid, where they are trapped and surrounded. But they're not alone. There are strange flowering vines all over the ruins, which seem to seem to have a sentient life of their own. I have to admit, once they got to the ruins of the title, and the real horror began, I found myself enjoying this film a lot!

(LS hears a groan from the pit and goes over to a winch. As he turns the crank, a rope rises up from the pit, holding someone on a stretcher. LS pulls the stretcher over and places it down on the top of the temple).

LS: There you are! You okay? Hey! You're not Michael!

(The guy on the stretcher mumbles in German. LS pulls a sheet off his legs to reveal they are covered in writhing vines.)

LS: Oh well, looks like I'm going to have to cut off your legs.

(LS pulls out a bottle of tequila, and at first looks like he's going to give the guy a drink as anesthesia, but instead he gulps it down himself.)

LS: This is going to hurt you a lot more than it's going to hurt me.

(He brings down a heavy rock on each leg, breaking the bones, then cuts them away with a pen knife while the guy screams in agony. Once his legs have been tossed away, the guy looks up with tears in his eyes.)

German Guy: Am I going to live?

LS: I doubt it. But this tequila sure is good!

(The German Guy's eyes glaze over as he slips into a coma.)

LS: So what was I saying? Oh yeah, THE RUINS has a simple enough story, as the kids get terrorized more and more by the killer plants, which like to take root in wounds and wriggle around under your skin. It turns out the natives' vigil at the bottom of the ruins is really a way to quarantine them from the outside world, now that some of them have gotten "infected."

Will any of them survive?

It may have a simple plot, but I thought director Carter Smith and screenwriter Scott B. Smith (who adapted his own novel) approached this material in a fresh way. The violence of this movie gets pretty gory at times, especially scenes of amateur surgery, but it's all in service to the story, and all makes sense in the logic of the film. The use of horror effects, especially flowers that have a major creepiness factor, and tendrils moving beneath people's skin, are very well done and the movie actually has some genuine scares. A scene where one character's legs are amputated without anesthesia is especially powerful.

(LS hears a weird noise and looks up, seeing a thousand flowers that look like mouths giving him the raspberry!)

LS: Oh be quiet, you freaky flowers!

The actors also do a great job, especially our main four protagonists: Control-freak medical student Jeff (Jonathan Tucker who we saw previously in the lackluster remake of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE); his girlfriend Amy (Jena Malone) who at first seems totally useless because she's so afraid, but who gets more courageous as the story goes on; her best fried Stacy (the very hot Laura Ramsey) who is the first of the four to succumb to the horror of the vines; and her frat boy boyfriend Eric (Shawn Ashmore). All four of them do a good job of making their characters more than just the usual stick figures. You care about them, and get caught up in their struggle to stay alive.

The direction is also above-average for this kind of thing, creating a definite sense of mood and suspense. This is easily one of my favorite horror films of the year so far (up there with CLOVERFIELD) and I totally recommend it.

(Vines suddenly cover LS and start dragging him down into the pit.)

LS: (tastes one of the vines) Hmmm, tastes like spinach. Maybe it's time for a nice big salad! Oh well, I've gotta go. See you all next time!

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