The Ruins

This film isn’t fantastic however it does have quite an original concept. It seems to me that there is no decent horror films lately, usually trashy remakes from classics or just the same ol’ film of undead flesh eating zombies but after watching ‘The Ruins’ again I thought it was worth mentioning as it is slightly different. This is taken from a book (which I haven’t read) but I think it could be quite a good read, perhaps not after seeing the film. I like the re-introduced ‘nature against man’ concept which can be seen with the classic ‘Day of the Triffids’ only ‘The Ruins’ contains a large amount of blood and gore and it’s good not to have a group of teenagers being slaughtered for once. 

With regards to this it still follows the same sort of story throughout where the characters find themselves trapped in one single location and cannot really get out until they are all dead apart from one. You guessed it, one of the lucky characters manages to get away from the temple area and manages to dodge aboriginals arrows which seems highly unlikely if this was real life. (Although, where do we find ourselves stuck in the middle of another country, having our fun sabotaged by sacred, cursed plants, which like to crawl into your body.) I swear when I first saw this film all of the characters died but who knows. 

The plot of this film follows two American couples who are enjoying their vacation in Mexico and they happen to make friends with a German tourist whose brother has gone to a sacred temple with a female archaeologist. After his brother has not returned for a few days he seeks help from the couples to go look for him at the site. Once upon the ruins they are confronted by the Mayan villagers who are armed with guns and bows. After standing on the vines it appears they have stood on something cursed as they are now trapped by the villagers who will kill them if they come near them. They are then forced to set up camp at the top of the ruins where they are then terrorised by the vines which crawl their way inside you, drag the rest of the corpses into the temple and THEY CAN EVEN MIMIC NOISES AND SPEECH! So basically it’s another game of survival of man vs nature. 

There are many downfalls for this film which is mainly down to the cast. The characters aren’t really introduced that well so we know very little background from them and they do some ridiculously stupid things that are just common sense to you and me. Also the effects look incredibly lame at times and the lead actor Jonathon Tucker’s voice annoyed the hell out of me! All in all this film was disappointing but it wasn’t the worst. If you’re a horror film fan and like REAL horror films then this won’t be the film for you.