Digging Deep Into The Ruins

It is not a stretch to compare horror movies to porno movies (the feature types, not the clip variety). Both waste our time with paper thin plot and character development before getting to what we really want to see. For example, the following scenario fits the template for either a slasher movie or a hardcore stag film. An early twenty-something urbane girl inherits a diner located in the boonies from her deceased grandmother. After her and 3-5 of her attractive friends get to work fixing it up, menacing locals attempt to intimidate the plucky youngsters out of the diner and off of the property. Eventually, the twenty-something girl prevails. The only difference between the slasher version and the porno version would be that in the slasher version, the girl would have to endure random acts of violence, while in the porno version, she would have to (obviously) endure random acts of sex. The point is, we don't really care about the diner, the girl, her friends, or the locals. They all just serve as bodies/holes. Any exposition explaining who or what these holes/bodies are is just filler.

Which brings me to The Ruins. The film begins with a girl trapped in a pit of some kind, screaming in vain for help. As something attacks her from the darkness, the beginning looks promising, filling us with hope that this director gets it, that we don't need to know who any of these people are. Unfortunately, we are next introduced to two couples, lounging by a pool, talking about drinking. Discussing drinking with people you have actually spent the night drinking with is boring. When it is carried out by four of the most annoying representations of American youth ever portrayed, such discussion is unbearable. Thankfully, a German fellow interrupts and invites the Americans to visit an archeological dig site at some Mayan ruins. Of course they say yes. To prove my point that most of a horror movie is filler, let me outline the contents of that roughly fifteen minute scene and then show how it could have been 30 seconds, with nothing lost on the viewer.

ORIGINAL SCENE
Dark-haired couple: You drink too much, no you drink too much, no you drink too much, no you drink too much...
Blond-haired couple: Stare vapidly and smile at the obviously smarter dark-haired couple (of course they're smarter, look at their hair!)
Dark-haired girl: I lost an earring!
They all tepidly look for the earring on the beach chairs and towels (I don't know if the lack of urgency in this search was to show that the characters were hung over or that even the actors were bored with this nonsense).
Across the pool, a German (we know he's German because of the neck beard) eavesdrops on the commotion and grabs his scuba gear, hoping to be a hero. Ze German succeeds, lucking out that a pool in Cancun is empty during Spring Break, and finds the earring, returning it to dark-haired girl and sharing some forced sexual tension with her. In order to relieve said tension (I guess) the German asks the gang if they want to check out some ruins where his German brother is helping a girl dig for the Ark of the Covenant (or something). Of course the gang says yes. Then some Greeks say they are coming, too. (This really happens, just as one of the Greeks does a cannonball into the pool. And, no, I did not skip the part where we meet the Greeks. This is their first appearance.)

HOW THE SCENE SHOULD HAVE GONE
German: You guys want to check out some ruins?
Youths: Yes.

Next, there is a 15 second shot of a group of people (who I assume are the protagonists but am not sure of because the director chose to film the scene from the Pacific coast of Mexico) staring at the sunset. By the time the sun is down, 7 other people have joined them on the beach for a typical Cancun Spring Break Party of quietly lounging on the beach, and they all talk about nothing. Then the dark-haired girl drunkenly tries to kiss the German, but the German is a man of principle, and refuses. The blond-haired couple look on, barely more interested than us. I described this utterly useless scene only to illustrate how boring and pointless the first half hour of this movie is. I will now skip the morning wake-up scene (the highlight is a gratuitous shot of the blond girl's boobs) and get to the meat, the ruins.

As the group looks up at the Mayan pyramid, a villager from the picture above shows up and starts yelling at them like he is a zombie from Resident Evil 4.

He gets all upset about something, and then shoots the only Greek who shows up in the head. Everyone is scared now, but not that bothered by the Greek's actual death. They scurry up the pyramid and settle in for the horror movie action we've been waiting for, right? Actually, no. Although there is a gruesome leg decapitation (maybe the most horrific thing I've seen on film), there isn't much horror. There is a killer cannabis plant that gets into cuts and eats dead bodies, but that's about it. The scary part is more psychological, as the four American youths struggle with their isolation and the paranoia caused by the killer weed and the crazy village that has set up a siege around them. Also, the German falls instantly and is paralyzed, and then worse. Oh, and the blond girl decides to give the blond guy a hand job in a tent, even though she just gashed her leg open pretty bad and the dark haired girl is lying right next to them. While there are some tense moments, all in all The Ruins lacks in the horror department. Unless you count the dark-haired girl's superfluous glasses that she takes on and off arbitrarily, which are completely unnecessary since we already know she's smart (see the hair). Just as you don't need glasses to get boned on film, you also don't need glasses to die on film.

In conclusion, The Ruins is a solid thriller, but I hesitate to call it a horror movie. The characters are rather boring and unlikable, which is unfortunate since they all end up living longer than I or you would prefer. While we become quite intimate with the ugly Americans, the only characters that matter, the pyramid and the weeds, are hung out to dry in terms of development. They are simply there, as are the villagers. The connection between the two (as well as why the Mayans built a pyramid on a killer weed) is never explained, leaving me for the first time in my life wanting more exposition from a porn--uh, I mean, horror movie.