The Ruins Movie Review
“Why aren’t you looking at me?”
The freaky reality (yes I know its not all real) of this movie really surprised me. I actually jumped once or twice in my seat last night. As with most horror films some aspects of the film are over the top. But that didn’t stop the film from doing what I assume it started out and planned to do. And that was to scare folks a little and to have them question every itch and scratch they get from now on.
The Ruins is a movie about a few friends in Mexico on their last vacation before going off into the real world after college. We meet a few familiar faces in “X-men’s” Shawn Ashmore, Jena Malone from “Into the Wild” and Jonathan Tucker from the short lived TV series, “The Black Donnellys”.
With one day left on their vacation together, a group of young kids decide to leave the confines of the resort against the will of Jeff (played by tucker), the level headed soon to be Doctor.
The group meets Mathias, another quest at the resort who by happenstance is awaiting his brother’s return from this ancient temple off of the beaten path. Conversation is struck up and the group all decides that they want to go see the temple the next morning.
This is when the “fun” and horror of the movie starts up. The kids are taken to a very rugged, off the beaten path, trail by a taxi driver who has warned them its not where they want to go. The ruins are already becoming a place not to visit. Jeff and Eric (Ashmore) lead the group into the jungle following Mathias to a small stream where they encounter two little children. The children seem to be from some tribe that lives in the jungle. From here we see the group disregard the gut feelings from Amy (Malone) and follow the path a little further up the stream to the temple.
Once at the temple, we are introduced to the mayhem that will follow. The towns folks from the neighboring tribe start to migrate towards the temple, forcing the group up onto the temple with guns and arrows. I will let you follow from here.
The overall feel of the movie was surprisingly well done to me. The movie is not going to win any awards or sell out a ton of theaters, but it will have a following and probably do well. The acting is on par for a standard horror film, much better than “Doomsday“!
The pretty faces of the film portray movie life rather than real life but what can we expect from the minds of Stiller. Yes “Ben Stiller” is tied in some small part to this film. I assume the same way Tarantino
is tied to “Eli Roth’s” latest trashy films. The standard drunk girls, short lived nudity and quick character introduction plague this film as any good horror film would.
I went into this movie not expecting much and came out with a positive attitude towards it. I would recommend this to my friends but only to those that I know have a solid stomach.
This movie is full of over the top gore. I would hesitate to tell many folks about this without mentioning the blood.
I would rate this a 
