"Thanks to the likes of Hostel and Saw, it seems every horror movie of the last four years has run on a surfeit of gore and a deficit of wit. The lone exception, Michael Haneke’s Funny Games—not technically a horror film—made up for its off-screen violence with unrelenting sadism. For audiences wary of all the viscera, The Ruins, released in the cinematic dog days of spring, offers a welcome respite.
Oh, sure, you’ll see multiple shootings and stabbings, a man’s bone yanked out of its socket, and a terrified young woman slicing into her own forehead. But rather than being the Rube Goldberg–style acts of a faceless serial killer, the violence is all for a recognizable purpose—namely, survival.
On the last day of a tequila-soaked vacation to Mexico, lovebirds Amy (Saved!’s Jena Malone) and Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) follow a hand-drawn map to an ancient Mayan temple. Too late, they realize they’ve incurred the wrath of the locals, who form a blockade around the ruins, forbidding them to leave. Along with bickering couple Stacy (Laura Ramsey) and Eric (X-Men 3’s Shawn Ashmore), they must use their combined intelligence and sparse rations to make the best of an increasingly grim situation.
Why so grim? Well, let’s just say The Ruins combines the creature-feature shock of Little Shop of Horrors with the mass paranoia of Dawn of the Dead. For the most part, it’s creepily effective, due to Carter Smith’s competent direction and Scott Smith’s smart screenplay, adapted from his 2006 novel. Smith was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 1998’s A Simple Plan, and while The Ruins is unlikely to earn such accolades, it’s clearly not angling for them. A Simple Plan featured Billy Bob Thornton and Bill Paxton as brothers exploring the dark side of the American dream. The Ruins opens with former teen-queen Malone in a cave whimpering, “Help me. Somebody help me.”
