This weekends review is “The Ruins”. In this story four friends vacationing in Mexico, are convinced to go to an uncharted Mayan ruin by another tourist who is looking for his brother. He tells them how his brother went with a female archeologist’s to study the ruins and haven’t returned. Now normally tourist or not, this seems like a scenario for trouble. Does that thought stop our group of four? Of course not, this is the chance of a lifetime to see something, that hasn’t been seen by anyone else. So with that they head out with the tourist, and his buddy to the ruins. Once there they see that there are natives living in the area when they run across two children. No one finds it odd, when one of them runs off into the forest. Well it’s little time to think about that, when more natives come , with guns and bow and arrows, and start to scream at the group. They quickly kill the tourist’s buddy, and makes the rest of the group climb up to the top of the ruined temple. Once on top they discover the tourist’s brother has been there, and had a camp site set up, but he himself ,and his woman companion are nowhere to be found. They also discover a hole that goes straight down into the temple, So of course they must see whats down there. After an accident happens, and the tourist and one of the girls are badly injured, they find themselves in a terrifying situation. They can’t leave the temple, because the natives have now brought their whole village to the site ,and will not let them leave. On top of that, they sense that something just isn’t right at the bottom of the temples hole. With no cellphone, and little food to keep them alive for too many days, they start to panic. Just then they start to hear a cellphone ringing at the bottom of the hole. Maybe it’s from the missing guy and girl, and can help them call someone for help. They decide to go down in the hole once more in search of the cell phone. Once down, they discover that they have been set up, and the temple itself has plans to keep them there. The wounded two in the group, start to get attacked by vines that seem to go after their wounded areas, and penetrate the areas. One thing leads to another, and they realize whats happened to everyone else who’s come across this temple. The temple feeds on anything living, and the natives below are well aware of this fact, and don’t want it’s curse to leave the area, therefore keeping our group at bay, till they are all killed off.
This movie has all the makings of a vacation gone terribly wrong. They stupidly leave the tourist grounds to go out on an adventure into an undiscovered area, never thinking that if it’s undiscovered, then that means your probably won’t be rescued if something goes wrong, which it always does. This movie is not at all scary, but does offer some good shocking moments here and there. The four friends are played by Johnathan Tucker, Laura Ramsey, Jena Malone, and Shawn Ashmore. The tourist is played by Joe Anderson. The whole premise of a temple that has deadly living vines that attack, is a good one but it doesn’t really get used to it’s fullest potential. I was somewhat disappointed in this movie, as it should have had the vines doing more. This could have been a very gory, and graphic movie, if they had just let the vines do all the killing throughout the whole movie. I will once again have to only give 1 out of 4 ruined temples to this movie. It just didn’t reach for more scares in the final product. The movie runs 1hr and 31mins, is rated R for strong violence and gruesome images, language, some sexuality and nudity. It was distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was written by Scott B. Smith, and directed by Carter Smith.
