PopSyndicate.com

Plainly speaking, The Ruins is an unfortunate mess. It’s also an unfortunate translation of a best-selling novel into a strictly B-grade horror film about a killer plant, with second-rate direction and acting. The most unfortunate thing about The Ruins is that Scott B. Smith ruins his scary novel with a flat, empty screenplay. Smith has translated before with far better results (A Simple Plan) but something obviously went wrong in post-production. There is really just one truly scary scene in the movie (and if you see it you’ll know it) but the rest goes nowhere quickly and predictably.

The premise is scary on paper, which is why The Ruins worked so well as a novel. It concerns four young college-age persons, Jeff (Jonathan Tucker), Amy (Jena Malone), Eric (Shawn Ashmore) and Stacy (Laura Ramsey) who are vacationing in Mexico. They meet up with a couple of Europeans, Mathias (Joe Anderson) and Dimitri (Dimitri Baveas) who are eager to see some ancient ruins in the remote jungles of Mexico, hoping to discover artifacts they can show off. Before they know it, the four young people are in the back of a yellow pickup marked “Taxi” on it with their European friends in the jungle yearning to get a view of history. Yet they discover evil in the ruins, and find themselves trapped there left for dead. Their struggle for survival pits themselves against an evil vine with a mind of its own.

Layers from Smith’s book are gone, and we’re left with a grisly, empty film that could easily substitute for Britney Spears’ career of late. The Ruins book was popular because it was chilling. The Ruins film, on the other hand, is far from scary. As true with many contemporary horror films, true chills and thrills are replaced with loads of graphic blood-letting, undermining a creepy premise.

The direction by Carter Smith is equally flat, and the acting second-rate from the largely unknown principals. Fresh-faced Malone is the most familiar face of the four, though the others, including Tucker, from TV’s The Black Donnelly’s and In the Valley Of Elah, along with Ashmore, whom many fanboys may recognize as Iceman from the X Men movies.

All are wasted here with some terrible dialogue coming from writer Smith, who should know better. Some of its unintentionally funny. “Four Americans just don’t go missing on vacation in Mexico.” Uh, yes they do. Or “We have to amputate his legs.” “Please tell me you’re joking.” About amputation? With that in mind, you have little sympathy for these young people making such dumb choices. Who else would go to the remote jungles on a whim? Even more, the guys in The Ruins come across as wimpy, forcing the girls to go down into the ruins for discovery. Go yourself if you want to find out what’s down there.

There is one, and only one, truly frightfully jumpy scene in The Ruins involving that killer plant, but then there are many more gory scenes of amputation and lots of uneasy, bloody cutting. Yes, it’s all due to that nasty vine making them crazy, but it goes nowhere fast, with an ending that raises more questions than it answers. Something must have gone wrong from filming to post-production; The Ruins seems edited down to focus on these gory moments, designed to bring in the audiences, which it could do in its first weekend out of sheer curiosity.

Little Shop of Horrors, that nifty little ‘80s musical about a killer plant, was much more fun to watch, with Steve Martin and Bill Murray gloriously eating up the screen. The Ruins is filled with much more horror, but not so much fun to watch. Killer plant devours people. Young people make stupid choices then self-destruct. Killer plant aside, Britney, Paris and Lindsey have already entertained us with that. The Ruins is hardly entertaining, just derivative and painful to watch.

1