Real Movie Views

The tagline of The Ruins is ‘terror has evolved.’ Since the monster of this movie is part of Mayan folklore and is thus ancient, this slogan makes no sense. It does sound cool, though. Four Americans – two guys and two girls – are vacationing in a Mexico resort. Instead of staying put at the pool, where they can drink margaritas and paw at each other, they take a side-trip to an archaeological dig. The ruins are a Mayan step pyramid located deep in the jungle, and getting there is such a hassle that only people who are either very determined or very stupid would bother. Since this is a horror movie, it’s not hard to figure out what category our heroes fall into. Upon arrival, they are greeted by a bunch of screaming Mayan locals who herd them to the top of the pyramid. The Mayans surround the ruins and our heroes are trapped. Their surroundings: a well, a few tents and a bunch of vines with pretty red flowers. Things fall apart quickly, mostly because of stupidity. A jaunt into the depths of the well leads to a broken back. A pair of legs get broken, and then amputated, in a lovingly sadistic scene that takes forever. One of the characters starts cutting herself with a knife, revealing tiny little vines swimming about in her bloodstream. Turns out that the vines are carnivorous and can talk, sort of – they imitate cell phones ringing and American tourists having sex quite well. The Ruins is part of the Stupid American Tourists Must Die genre, a horror movie that features foreigners killing Americans traveling abroad because they’re Americans. This movie doesn’t work for a lot of reasons, but it boils down to the fact that a carnivorous plant is a pretty goofy movie monster. The special effects – such as they are – consist of moving vines. Wow. None of the characters ever rise above the level of road kill; good thing, because the movie is hard enough to sit through as is, and if we cared about the characters it would be impossible to watch. It’s interesting that the rise of Stupid American Tourists Must Die genre has coincided with the fall of America’s image abroad. One of the characters in The Ruins has a speech that boils down to this: we’re Americans. Nobody messes with us. Not unless you’re a man-eating plant, anyway.