1h 30m
Director: Carter Smith

Ok, you're not going to enjoy this one if you don't like a bit of body horror.

A group of holidaying youngsters decide to visit a Mayan temple ruin to add a cultural experience to their itinerary but everything goes sour when they arrive there because the place appears to be sacred and protected by the local village.

The cultural differences really start to show when one of the young people is executed and they are forced to ascend the temple to avoid further confrontation. You get a bit of foreshadowing when Mathias finds his brother dead having arrived earlier but there is a deeper and much darker mystery here which is gradually uncovered.

This is one of those films where the injuries and deaths take you by surprise because of the initial innocent play of our protagonists and because it goes from zero to one hundred. They are ill prepared for tragedy and that makes it all a bit more shocking.

Something about the vines that grow on the temple seems to be what the locals are concerned about and it seems that what initially presented as aggression was in fact a warning. I'm not sure if "The Ruins" ends up being more of a description of their holiday than a description of the place they decide to visit.

This movie ends up being a morose downward spiral of despair and doesn't have a happy ending or any moral outcome so you might not enjoy it unless you are examining the performances.

The plants appear to be carnivorous and seem intent on eating the visitors by growing in their flesh. So the drama gets much more intense when the Americans realise they're being imprisoned by the locals who are waiting for them to die.

Horrible innit? It does help illustrate a distinct difference between older horror which was schlocky and you could tell it was tongue in cheek to this modern angle which feels completely serious and realistic. There might be times during this particular narrative where a good old jump scare would cheer you up a bit.

The scene where they have to chop someones legs off with nothing more than a rock to break the bones and a very basic knife will have most people wincing. I can think of a few people who'll be racing to watch this now I've told you that!

If you want to see an hour and a half of wholesome entertainment then don't bother but if you want to see an approximation of how humans might behave when they find themselves in a hopeless and horrifying situation then this film has you covered. The group gets pretty desperate by the end and some bad things go down.

It's bleak but if you want to see some horror then you won't forget this in a hurry!



Trailer: