The Ruins is like that borderline grade you get on a test. You know, like that C-, like not very good, but at the same time not bad enough to be awful. It's a cheap, forgettable movie that never really delivers on any of the promises it makes, basically that movie you go see when everything else is sold out. Two years ago, I read the book. It was bad. It was about 400 pages of text that could've been easily trimmed to 200 without losing any of the story. Therein lies the problem with the film: the horror, the tension, it all relies on knowing the characters, their backgrounds, what they're thinking, stuff like that. You can't do that in movies very effectively, and in the end result is five punching bags whose only reason for existing is to be killed very gruesomely. That's what holds The Ruins back; it's a by-the-numbers, short horror story with no heart and no soul that is only here to make money from teenagers who need a date movie.
So what's it about? It's a plant. A 'killer' plant that also happens to be a wuss and doesn't really do anything. That's another issue; the primary antagonist, the whole reason for the people being quarantined, really takes a backseat to the fake drama that's playing out on screen. It does nothing of any significance and as a monster in the movie it fails miserabley. When your movie's monster isn't on screen as long as the title sequence, AND the people in the movie aren't very interesting, then you have a problem.
I'm done ripping it.
The fact is, I'm probably approaching it the wrong way. I was expecting a monster movie and didn't get one so I'm going to whine about it. The reality, though, is that the plant really isn't a 'monster,' I guess it's supposed to represent the foil, that little devil on the shoulder, a gremlin or a nuisance that's supposed to just oversee the fake drama. Oh well.
With all the negatives in this movie, being its wussy monster, its short length and throwaway characters, it does manage to squeeze in some chills. There's a part where the plant slithers inside one of the characters through a cut. The ending is also drastically improved from the book, which cops out. So while The Ruins isn't necessarily a horrible movie, it's still exactly what the producers intended it to be: a throwaway film with throwaway characters and a throwaway plot that you'll spend 20 bucks to see and then forget it ever existed. At the end of the day, The Ruins is the middle man between your date and her bedroom.
Score: 5/10
