Hola all. Massawyrm here.
Well this was unexpected. It’s rare that a film that looks like this, sounds like this and ultimately gets its only Austin screening at 10 O’ Clock the night before release actually turns out to be as good as this. But this was good. Quite good. Much like many a horror surprise, the premise sounds at first tired, then weak. A couple of twenty-somethings are vacationing in Mexico when they hear about an archeological dig at a previously uncharted Mayan ruin. “Hey gang! Let’s go!” One of them prods and the next thing you know five good-looking kids are traipsing through the jungle. Guess what? It doesn’t turn out so great for the Mystery Gang.
But much like many a cool ass horror flick before it, The Ruins takes trite well trodden material and freshens it up with some clever ideas, new angles and a story that I dare say contains shades of Carpenter. Because once we get the set-up out of the way, the rest of the film is 5 very realistic, far from incompetent folks caught atop ancient Mayan ruins – with a posse of pissed off natives refusing to let them leave and a supernatural something or other keeping them from wanting to stay. What follows is a tensegame of how far would you go to survive as the story gets more and more fucked up every step of the way.
This film takes what should be a very immature concept and instead makes an incredibly mature horror film out of it that revolves around developing an idea, a new creature of horror - like some distant cousin of The Thing - and takes the story to its rough, painful and inevitable conclusion. These kids aren’t stupid – but they are kids. They don’t always make the right choices, but they’re not exactly bubble-headed Voorhees victims either. And when they begin to fall apart, the film makes the very best of it, ratcheting up the tension and delivering 100%.
What seems to edge this one above the common horror fare - especially the typical studio schlock we’ve been getting lately – is the acting. This is a supernatural standoff movie, and for those to work you have to have a group of actors with real chemistry and the chops to spend a bulk of the movie stuck in the same room (or in this case on the same 30’ piece of stone) together. Jena Malone (Into the Wild, Contact) is great as always – and Jonathan Tucker (The Black Donnelley’s) turns in a blistering performance as her boyfriend and the stoic leader. Shawn Ashmore (Iceman, freaking Iceman) is almost completely unrecognizable beneath his scruffy man-beard and assuming the not-nearly-as-sharp member of the foursome – but does a really great job with it. All butch and manly, he really kind of casts off the whole aw shucks boy next door thing and is allowed to cut loose a bit. Why I haven’t seen this kid in a dozen other things by now is still eluding me.
But what really blew my mind was how good Laura Ramsey was. Here’s a girl I should probably loath by now. Being one of the few people alive to have suffered through pretty much the entirety of her filmography, most notably the incredibly unreal The Real Cancun; my favorite beer-drinking-bad-movie in recent memory The Covenant; and of course Venom, the horror film like me and three other people in the world actually suffered through. I should hate this chick at this point. And yet, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Not in that creepy I’m gonna drive home quick as to not lose and spoil the erection sort of way – but rather I finally saw the charisma and talent that has been getting her all these roles for all these years. Surprisingly, when given solid material, she kinda rocks.
Together, these four really sell the premise – which is tough. At first the ideas this movie is playing around with seem pretty damned silly. But once the cast reels you into the tension of the film, the ideas are allowed to develop and become pretty fucking cool. A real monster with a fantastic story and something of a scary, implied history.
Newcomer director Carter Smith really does his job here. He manages to choose all the right angles to keep the same characters in the confines of the same 30 or so feet interesting at all times. He tempers just the right amount of blood and sound work with off screen injuries and death to keep it both brutal but never over the top. And he never gets gratuitous with anything. Everything is in just the right amount to feel natural. Hell, Laura Ramsey spends a good portion of the film running around in her panties and Smith manages to make that more a part of the horror than Hey look, I got a hot actress to wander around the whole movie in her panties. Here, let ’s switch to cameltoecam for all the thirteen year old boys in the audience.
And on top of all that there are some pretty good scares in this thing. I wish every studio film could be made with the same kind of attention and care that this was made with. It’s a good old fashioned scary ass monster movie. And it works. The Ruins Comes Recommended for horror fans or anyone looking for a good, mature, scary flick.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
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