The Ruins
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| Directed by | Carter Smith | |
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| Release date | 4 April 2008 | |
| Runtime | 93 minutes | |
| RYM Rating | ||
| Ranked | #483 for 2008 | |
| Language | English, French, Spanish, German, Greek | |
| Genres | ||
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Review
To rate, slide your finger across the stars from left to right.
Cast
- Jonathan Tucker
Jeff - Jena Malone
Amy - Shawn Ashmore
Eric - Joe Anderson
Mathias - Laura Ramsey
Stacy - Sergio Calderón
Lead Mayan - Δημήτρης Μπαβέλλας [Dimitris Bavellas]
Dimitri - Luis Antonio Ramos
Mayan Rifleman
12 Reviews
It's nice to find a horror theme that hasn't been done to death - spoiler: click to read - and although it isn't especially scary, its gore is well done and it's cheesily clichéd in all the right ways. It's incredibly silly, of course, but if you buy into the central premise, it's good, barmy fun.
Published
A fun, dumb little flick, better than I was expecting. Two couples vacationing in Mexico go on an adventures to find an untouched Mayan ruin. They get trapped on top of the temple when the locals show up with bow and arrows and guns and won't let them leave. It makes you wonder why the locals don't just shoot everyone right away, they'd only be saving themselves some time. Instead they set up camp waiting for the Americans to try to escape or kill each other. It's a nice event for the whole family to see.
Published
I care for these people simply by virtue of having to watch them struggle their hardest to stay alive and not die for an hour and a half. I don't care about their pasts or futures or how they die, provided it's not while I'm watching. People in The Ruins are neither good nor bad, just shades of ambiguous difference- too passive, too domineering, too suspicious, too gullible. Their relationships too are the sum of what they lack. The film locates these faults and chips away at them until we see things come apart in an environment which accelerates conclusions. In an early scene Jena Malone gets too drunk and her boyfriend bails on the party and her best friend makes a bet that she'll cheat on that boyfriend. Why he left her like this, and why her best friend is so interested in seeing her make decisions when she basically cannot stand up and that she will regret is the entire human story of The Ruins.
The film is adamant that character has nothing to do with survival. It tells us that nobody deserves to live, because that would mean that others deserve to die. An innocent child is shot dead to clearly articulate this point. In a world with no reward or punishment for trying or not trying given that death and survival are not bound to action much less morality, death becomes a waiting game. When and how these desperately unhappy people will die, The Ruins will show us. We are asked to care and not care all at once, and the film teases survival but delivers attrition. This is a cinema of attrition. We read about people who go missing and die in the woods, and we know that no amount of trying could have saved them. Our stomachs get heavy and numb. Horror is the perfect format for confronting this numb heaviness and forcing us to empathise with those who've realised that at a certain stage they are trapped and there is no way out. The Ruins has its fatalism so entrenched in its bones that it sees people trying to resist this fate as naïveté or like data. The film watches from a distance to see what they'll do, but it knows they won't succeed, and so it feels like an experiment conducted on mice that'll be tossed in a bin when the data has been collated. The group is incidental, their personalities insignificant.
On an individual level this seems contrary to what many of us desire from horror cinema. What good is confronting your fears if you're not actually given the agency to confront them? You end up enduring them instead. The cameras' ultra crisp rendering of bodies and skies makes the images feel like digital composites which gives the film a hyperreal quality not unlike that of The Shallows. Both of these films are concerned with survival, but Collet-Serra cares too much to have his film not fight back. This is not about endings or events- it doesn't matter whether Blake Lively ends up dead or alive, it matters how resistance is framed by the film that she inhabits. The Shallows is running until your feet fall off, while The Ruins is folding a sheet of paper in half again and again until you can't fold it another time. Or The Shallows is fighting with all your strength until your limbs are worn off, while The Ruins is having your legs chopped off by your friend and then stealing the knife early one morning and cutting yourself open head to toe and waiting until you starve or bleed to death. The Shallows is a one-person slasher, while The Ruins is a slasher with no running, all carnage. The thing is that this works for the threat-as-mortality-itself, but the shark and the plant could be anything- an abusive partner or family member, mental illness, addiction. To offer but not believe in survival and resistance is the cinema of attrition, and it kills me. This is not criticism- it could be read as praise.
On a group level the film seems mean-spirited, and on an individual one it seems outright nihilistic. Taking a few steps back, it becomes clear why we are not supposed to hope for survival in The Ruins. If your friends and family can't save you, and you can't save yourself, then who or what else are we expected to call upon? These people are on a quest for 'authenticity' overseas, to break from their amusement park existence and look for the last remaining scraps of the exotic, the Other, the illicit. They are reckless and condescending and they use their cameras like armour. When the cameras fail they ask to be taken back to the theme park- they think their whiteness, their native English tongue, is a permanent Get Out of Jail free card. They think they can restart the simulation and that everyone is just playing along for them. The Ruins makes it so their inability to understand anything outside of themselves and take responsibility for their actions has them fundamentally at odds with everything they encounter- their survival would mean the end of everyone else. Still they think We are white, we survive, we win. But no, you're trapped. There's no secret, no ejector seat, no back-up, it's just you and your nasty friends in your toxic relationships, trapped and waiting to die.
The film is adamant that character has nothing to do with survival. It tells us that nobody deserves to live, because that would mean that others deserve to die. An innocent child is shot dead to clearly articulate this point. In a world with no reward or punishment for trying or not trying given that death and survival are not bound to action much less morality, death becomes a waiting game. When and how these desperately unhappy people will die, The Ruins will show us. We are asked to care and not care all at once, and the film teases survival but delivers attrition. This is a cinema of attrition. We read about people who go missing and die in the woods, and we know that no amount of trying could have saved them. Our stomachs get heavy and numb. Horror is the perfect format for confronting this numb heaviness and forcing us to empathise with those who've realised that at a certain stage they are trapped and there is no way out. The Ruins has its fatalism so entrenched in its bones that it sees people trying to resist this fate as naïveté or like data. The film watches from a distance to see what they'll do, but it knows they won't succeed, and so it feels like an experiment conducted on mice that'll be tossed in a bin when the data has been collated. The group is incidental, their personalities insignificant.
On an individual level this seems contrary to what many of us desire from horror cinema. What good is confronting your fears if you're not actually given the agency to confront them? You end up enduring them instead. The cameras' ultra crisp rendering of bodies and skies makes the images feel like digital composites which gives the film a hyperreal quality not unlike that of The Shallows. Both of these films are concerned with survival, but Collet-Serra cares too much to have his film not fight back. This is not about endings or events- it doesn't matter whether Blake Lively ends up dead or alive, it matters how resistance is framed by the film that she inhabits. The Shallows is running until your feet fall off, while The Ruins is folding a sheet of paper in half again and again until you can't fold it another time. Or The Shallows is fighting with all your strength until your limbs are worn off, while The Ruins is having your legs chopped off by your friend and then stealing the knife early one morning and cutting yourself open head to toe and waiting until you starve or bleed to death. The Shallows is a one-person slasher, while The Ruins is a slasher with no running, all carnage. The thing is that this works for the threat-as-mortality-itself, but the shark and the plant could be anything- an abusive partner or family member, mental illness, addiction. To offer but not believe in survival and resistance is the cinema of attrition, and it kills me. This is not criticism- it could be read as praise.
On a group level the film seems mean-spirited, and on an individual one it seems outright nihilistic. Taking a few steps back, it becomes clear why we are not supposed to hope for survival in The Ruins. If your friends and family can't save you, and you can't save yourself, then who or what else are we expected to call upon? These people are on a quest for 'authenticity' overseas, to break from their amusement park existence and look for the last remaining scraps of the exotic, the Other, the illicit. They are reckless and condescending and they use their cameras like armour. When the cameras fail they ask to be taken back to the theme park- they think their whiteness, their native English tongue, is a permanent Get Out of Jail free card. They think they can restart the simulation and that everyone is just playing along for them. The Ruins makes it so their inability to understand anything outside of themselves and take responsibility for their actions has them fundamentally at odds with everything they encounter- their survival would mean the end of everyone else. Still they think We are white, we survive, we win. But no, you're trapped. There's no secret, no ejector seat, no back-up, it's just you and your nasty friends in your toxic relationships, trapped and waiting to die.
Published
Attack of the killer plants! Not really a scary movie, but there is some brutal fucking stuff happening here and it's well done and enjoyable for a 00's flick. Has an intelligent script, some sympathetic characters, pretty scenery, and lots of cringe-worthy painful moments. The CGI plants were pretty goofy, but otherwise I deem this a damn decent film. One that doesn't necessarily scare, but it definitely horrifies.
Published
This was a fun little flick that I'd heard nothing about, but some friends brought it to preview while we were cottaging. At first I thought the film was annoying with a bunch of whoring drunken young people on vacation in Mexico. Then they meet a mysterious fellow who offers to take them on an adventure they'll never forget...to unmarked ruins in the jungle. Of course young stupid people can't resist a challenge so off they go, but things are soon not what they appear when a member of their group is shot dead by the locals. They race up the temple only to find that escape isn't really possible, and that survival is made nearly impossible due to a curse. The actual erm "murderer" in this is absolutely silly, but the plot and visuals are interesting enough to make it worthwhile. It's one of those...what would I do type scenarios in a horror film, and really the idea has not been overworked. Not a classic by any stretch but way better than anticipate.
Published
Holy Christ this movie is stupid. Once you make peace with that, it becomes entertaining enough I guess, but damn is it stupid.
I do like spoiler: click to read though, and that spoiler: click to read
And "This doesn't happen! Four Americans on holiday don't just disappear!" has got to be some kind of high watermark as far as Look Look, We're Doomed, Look, See How Doomed We Are dialogue goes. (That's not a spoiler because, you know, duh.)
I do like spoiler: click to read though, and that spoiler: click to read
And "This doesn't happen! Four Americans on holiday don't just disappear!" has got to be some kind of high watermark as far as Look Look, We're Doomed, Look, See How Doomed We Are dialogue goes. (That's not a spoiler because, you know, duh.)
Published
As scary as it should be. Well done but nothing more...
Published
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