Ruins, The [Unrated]

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I said in my review of the standard-def edition of "The Ruins" that I had never seen the original R-rated theatrical version but might have preferred it to this unrated cut. The keep-case note explains why; namely, the unrated version contains "scenes too intense for theaters." These few minutes of extended footage are mostly bloody, graphic, and up-close, which in Blu-ray's clearer, sharper high definition only made me want to turn my head away from the TV screen all the more. Greater clarity does not always make for a better movie.

Anyway, the film's message seems to be never to trust a plant. They'll turn on you. That's true; I've got rose bushes in the front and back yards that are beautiful to look at, but if you get too near them, they'll attack. I guess the ancient Mayans also understood the principle because it forms the basis for this 2008 horror thriller. Unfortunately, man-eating plants and Mayan pyramids are not the only things lying in ruin by the time the movie is over. So is everything else about this blood-drenched affair.

The Setup:
A group of four young friends--Jeff (Jonathan Tucker), Amy (Jena Malone), Eric (Shawn Ashmore), and Stacy (Laura Ramsey)--all in their early twenties, are vacationing on the Mexican coast. They meet a young German, Mathias (Joe Anderso), who tells them his brother and his brother's girlfriend are investigating a ruined Mayan pyramid just a few miles inland. Would they like to come along with him and a friend and see what they're up to? Sure thing, say the unwary travelers.

When they trek through the jungle and reach the pyramid, they suddenly find themselves surrounded by hostile local Mayans with pistols, rifles, bows, and arrows. The Mayans don't speak English or Spanish, and they summarily shoot Mathias's friend in the head. The remaining young people flee to the top of the pyramid for refuge, where they find Mathias's brother's tent next to a deep hole in the top of the structure. And they find everything covered in vines.

That's about it. The characters are trapped on the crown of an ancient pyramid in the middle of a jungle, encircled by presumably crazed Mayans. The characters haven't a clue what the populace are so angry about or why they have isolated them up there. They only know they can't go down or the angry locals will kill them, and they can't survive on the top of a pyramid for long without food or water.

Then the vines begin to move.

The Pros:
1. There is some beautiful location photography on display. Not of México, however, but of Queensland, Australia, substituting for México. Still, it's pretty, especially in high def.

2. Fashion photographer and first-time feature-film director Carter Smith does a good job moving the action forward. Considering the paucity of story ideas and the confinement of the plot essentially to a single location, Smith manages to make a ninety-three-minute film actually feel like ninety-three minutes rather than six hours.

3. The young people are attractive and usually wear skimpy outfits, so all of the scenery is nice.

4. The movie's title is commendably succinct.

The Cons:
1. Several creepy little kids foreshadow the evil to come, a device I thought the movie industry had legally restricted to Asian horror flicks and their American remakes. I mean, don't characters in movies ever know when something really bad is going to happen? Don't they ever go to the movies?

2. The film's premise is silly. For over a thousand years the local Mayans have been guarding a terrible secret (the deadly vines), yet nobody has ever figured it out?

3. There are too many main characters to care about. Even after a fairly lengthy introduction, we don't know enough about any of these people to feel badly when things go wrong for them. Just knowing things like Amy is an airhead and Jeff is a pre-med student is hardly adequate.

4. Between Amy's stupid whining and the utter incompetence of the other young people, their predicament gets tiresome fast.

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