Hey there. Thanks for checking out our “The Ruins” review.
I’ve got to admit right up front that when I first saw the marketing for “The Ruins”, I shock my head and didn’t have much hope for it. You can’t blame me really. The last 2 years have been filled with utterly forgetable tripe in the horror world. So much just seems to be a shameless knock off of the film that just came out 2 weeks ago, that was itself a shameless knock off of something else from last month… and so on and so on. Some movies off the top of my head like Bug, Skinwalkers and Captivity all fit into this category, and to be frank, The Ruins looked like just another throw away horror movie. Thankfully, it’s not… and actually ends up entertaining you a little.
THE GENERAL IDEA
The idea for The Ruins goes something like this: Two young female best friends and their respective boyfriends (one of which is a medical student) are off on a resort holiday in Mexico enjoying themselves. For their whole trip they’ve pretty much just stayed at the resort and haven’t done any adventuring. On their second last day they meet a German tourist who tells them about an ancient ruins site that isn’t on the tourist maps that his brother is currently at doing some excavating with an archeologist and he is going to go see it himself “tomorrow” since he has a map. The group agrees to go him. Once they arrive they find that people from a local village refuse to let them leave or get off the ruins at all. They don’t know why they’re being kept there, but slowly start to understand, and realize they aren’t really alone! DUN DUN DUN!!!
THE GOOD
Just as I always say that comedies must make you laugh in order to really work, horror movies have to legitimately make you feel scared or at least creeped out in order for it to really work. On this level, The Ruins doesn’t disappoint in my books. As the 5 friends start to understand and realize the horror that inhabits the ruins they are being isolated on, I found myself sharing a sense of dread that the characters must have been feeling. There are several solid “money shots” in the film that successfully disturb you, others that scare you. There is one shot in particular involving some pretty red flowers that gave me a serious “HOLY SHIT” moment.
You know what, for a lower budget horror film in this vein of genre, the acting was surprisingly good, especially the scenes where you’re supposed to believe the characters are horrified out of their wits. Trust me, you believe it.
The Ruins does a nice job of avoiding some seriously overused horror cliches. There are a few parts in the movie where you THINK you know what’s going to happen (because it looks like another cliche about to be employed) only to realize the director steers away from it. It was refreshing to see (although the film is not totally devoid of its share of cliches)
THE BAD
The funny thing is that there aren’t really any glaring or obvious weaknesses to The Ruins for me to talk about here. The biggest sin in the film is mediocrity. While the basic story is fine, the acting is pretty good, the effects were decent… nothing was “exceptional” with the film and far too many things are left on a shallow note for us as an audience to just wonder about and never know. I’m cool with films not spelling everything out to us… but to give us basically NOTHING is a bit frustrating, and without at least some back knowledge of a story it’s difficult to get too interested or invested in what’s going on. The movie works as a horror, but it remains bland in just about every other aspect. The characters aren’t compelling, there is no back story to speak of and aside from one or two little semi-surprises the whole movie is just these characters in the same situation for the entire duration of the film without much else to push the story along… if there was more story to be pushed on to.
OVERALL
The Ruins works because it succeeds at what horror movies must do… creep you out and scare you enough times. But it fails to get much more than a passing grade because it clearly decides to rest lazily on that fact and puts next to no effort into rounding it out as an overall movie to make something special. As a result, you still get an enjoyable little horror film that I think works, but nothing too special. Overall I give The Ruins a 6.5 out of 10
