Review-The Ruins or Eh..wasn't as bad as I expected.

Oh don't get me wrong, it wasn't the best flick ever. But it did keep me entertained for about %70-%80 of the movie. I mean if anything it would have given me good mocking material, right? I was expecting painfully awful. What I got was mediocre...which actually wasn't too bad considering my expectations.


This will contain spoilers.

Synopsis - After a rousing night of drinking, sleeping with each other, and mocking the locals, a group of young American tourists think it would be cool to visit some lost ruins. Why? I have no idea. Possibly to fuck in them I suppose. But it turns out there are more to these ruins than means the eye I.E. Man eating plant life! AHHHH! And a group of natives stand guard and refuse to let them leave looking about as bored as the night watchman at your local strip mall.

See that? We are SO going to fuck in there.

Okay okay, I'm mocking it. Its kinda hard not to when a movie feels like a cross between Day of the Triffids and armature surgery night on the Discovery channel.

So, the Good.
The best parts about this movie are anything to do with the plants. Granted, its very hard to make grandma's creeping ivy appear terrifying but the movie does do a good job on making them feel threatening. Through the movie you notice the vines are slowly creeping up our our merry band of douche bags making their space smaller and smaller. And even the CGI when the vines do start to move doesn't come across as super cheesy. The only thing that I did chuckle at were how the flowers could imitate sound. It was a little weird but it seemed to work after a while and add the the creepiness of these plants.
The gore was very well done and even made me twitch and cringe a couple times. We have someones legs getting amputated with a hunting knife, we have a crazy blond chick cutting herself up in a mad blood covered frenzy, a couple heads get blown off, and of course we had plants slowly getting inside of people. Nope, no plant rape. But we do have moments of vines crawling into peoples wounds, people trying to cut out said vines, and vines generally doing weird things to bodies. I'm probably in the minority here but I have an aversion spidery vines trying to grow on you. Don't ask why because I have no clue were I developed that fear. My guess is when I watched Creep Show for the first time. But they definitely don't do the typical lash out and grab routine you very often at all. Its more like you wake up and suddenly you have vines all over you. They are stealthy ninja plants!

Don't judge my irrational fears.

The subplot of the natives being there to keep the plants from spreading had a lot of potential. I liked the idea of these vines being like a zombie virus. If any plant residue escaped, we'd all be making some sweet sweet vine love... Unfortunately this went no where which I will touch on shortly.

And The Bad
Despite the fact that the best part of the movie were the plants, the plants really didn't do too much which disappointed me. But I suppose we couldn't have too much plant action or the film would have been 30 minutes long. There was no doubt in my mind that this group could not out wit a plant. Seriously. I knew they were fertilizer the moment they came on screen. Still I longed for more plant action. Maybe this movie would have been better as a short film.
The characters...I mean come on. There was not one appealing character in the entire film. Everyone was a douche bag! Sometimes its fun to watch jerks get their comeuppance but you need to at least sympathise a bit with someone to feel the terror. I found myself thinking "Oh thank God they're dead now I don't have to listen to them whine!". While I know that they all had names, I could not remember a damn one. I classified them as No legs, The screechy blond, Lindsey Lohan's stunt double, The guy with the crow magnum brow, Dead meat, and the Hobbit. Though I have to admit I did like the screechy blond simply because the scene where she goes completely out of her mind was awesome.

And I bet you can pick out four of who I described.

The Ending....I mean COME ON. What the Hell?! Now at the beginning of the film we the viewers are given the impression that no one will escape the ruins because if any plant life gets out and spreads it becomes more or less like a zombie virus. And our American tourists are covered in plant dust. They even emphasise this more when a plant touches one of the natives children and they shoot him dead instantly. So the tourists have this great escape plan which is the horror equivalent of the"dressing in drag and doing the hula" routine while one of our heroes runs to safety. She runs! Gets into the jeep! She drives! She's free!!....and that's it.....Okay....so where's the pay off for that whole the plants cannot spread subplot you've been bugging us with? Hell if I know. And that subplot was something I thought was really interesting too. Yet it just gets tossed out the window.
I also wonder if anyone thought about bees when they came up with that subplot.

Anyways, The Ruins was okay but nothing I would get over excited for. It had some good gore moments so its worth checking out for that I suppose. Otherwise I would either catch it on cable or wait until it ends up on Hulu.
But if you do deside to watch it you at least get a payoff of some really good plant action