The Horror Review Hole

Direction: Carter Smith (2008)

Starring: Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone, Shawn Ashmore, Laura Ramsey

"Four Americans on vacation don't just disappear." How sweetly naive. Here in the movies, you rarely do anything but. Four Americans plus a German and a Greek are holidaying in Mexico. On their last day, they decide to leave the resort and visit the ruins of a remote Mayan temple. But once the kids reach the spot, they're surrounded by angry locals who kill one of their number and force the rest to climb the pyramid. They're left there until they either die of thirst of die of plants. The latter being a more likely prospect than you might think.

But first, Mathias (Joe Anderson) falls down a hole and breaks his back. From inside the temple, they hear a mobile phone ringing. Or at least that's what they think it is. It's actually the plants making mobile phone noises. I'd like to see a plant copy my ringtone. It's the Star Trek: Original Series overture. As the remaining youngsters panic about Mathias's shattered spine, they find themselves unprepared for the attack of some really nasty plants. Even worse than stinging nettles.

As the stupid tourists cut, bash, bludgeon and stab their own various body parts, they begin to notice vines moving around beneath their skin. Mathias's legs become completely overrun with flowers, like a dead old grandmother's unattended garden. They are pretty flowers though. Red, a bit like roses. Stacy (Ramsey) starts to lose her mind. Doctor Jeff (Tucker) insists that they need to do something horrible to save Mathias's legs. Amy (Malone) is really annoying.

The Ruins is far better than one might expect a movie about flowers to be. It's certainly a lot gorier and crueler than I'd anticipated. The Ruins is grim character-driven horror. It'll certainly make you look twice at those dastardly dandelions sitting at the side of the road.

Starring: James Franco, Dwayne Johnson.

Silly outdoors idiot Aron Ralston (Franco) falls down a hole and gets his hand stuck under a rock. The main selling point of the movie being that he cuts his hand off in the end. It's a good job that Danny Boyle knows how to direct a film, because most movies suck when you know what happens in the end. Case in point, Titanic.

Ralston is an excitement-seeker who takes off canyoneering in Utah, alone and without telling anyone where he's going. He's distracted by a pair of hotties (Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn) who invite him to a party before he runs away again and falls down a hole. He's followed down his hole by a rock (The Rock, almost unrecogniseable beneath all that heavy makeup) what crushes his hand and traps him there. It's really hot and Ralston has very little to eat or drink. All he does have is a handheld videocamera, some climbing rope and a blunted multitool. Not even a Leatherman.

127 Hours is a true story, based on the real life experience of Aron Ralston, who recounts it in his book Between A Rock And A Hard Place (GET IT). People like Ralston miff me royally off, since I used to work in an outdoorsy shop and had to deal with his sort all day. People with a passion for the outdoors are generally quite annoying and arrogant and go around falling down holes and dying outside of abandoned buses, but only when they're not asking me stupid questions about vegetarian shoes and bragging about how many holidays they've been on this year. Aside from Ralston being a bit of a pain in the ass to begin with, it's easy to empathise with his position. It's a great question, too. Could you bring yourself to cut your own hand off with a blunt knife? 127 Hours is like an avant-garde remake of Saw.

Danny Boyle is an expert director, and ensures it's never boring or slow. To be fair, if Boyle can make a film about a guy winning Who Wants To Be A Millionaire good, you best be sure he knows how to make a guy cutting his hand off seem tense. And icky, too. It's not as faint-inducing as its publicity might have you believe, but you'll definitely go "ooh."

Director: Rodrigo Cortes (2010)

Starring: Ryan Reynolds.

Find it: IMDB, Amazon

It's Ryan Reynolds in a coffin, and that's it. So one's enjoyment of Burial depends firmly on one's tolerance for Ryan Reynolds. Thankfully, Ryan Reynolds has grown upon me since ruining Blade Trinity. Although, to be fair, after Blade Trinity and Van Wilder: Party Cunt, I'd have been quite happy to have seen him buried underground, never to make another movie again.

But he has improved since then. No longer reliant on one-liners and his abs, Buried gives Reynolds a chance to bust some acting chops. A truck driver in Iraq, Paul Conroy (guess who) is kidnapped and dumped underground in a coffin in the desert. Like Kill Bill: Part 2 and the Tarantino CSI episode, but with less of anyone or anything else. Except maybe (SPOILER) a snake and some sand. Buried with nothing but a mobile phone and a few other basic items, Paul makes some frantic calls to try and sort out a rescue. What he wouldn't give for a Power Ring now, eh.

It's masterfully acted and directed, but dare I say it, I found Buried kind of dull. Perhaps if I suffered from claustrophobia it may have had more of an effect, but it's not much better a movie than Phone Booth. Aside from its central conceit and the impressive lead performance, Buried offers no surprises nor anything particularly original. I saw its ending coming a mile off and was left simply underwhelmed.

In all fairness, I think Kill Bill ruined stuck-in-a-coffin deathtraps for me. I spent all of Buried wondering why Reynolds didn't just punch his way out of the thing.

Stuck contains plenty of splatter and some of the worst car carnage stuff since that Cronenberg film where people stick their boners inside car accidents. There's all sorts of vehicular carnage, protracted scenes of grot and grue, stabby bits, pokey bits and slicey bits. There are a couple of typically funny Stuart Gordon fight scenes (I particularly enjoyed the frying pan) and a cringeworthy moment with a pen. Not for the faint of heart, Stuck is a well-made, well-acted little horror movie that does for car windshields what Psycho did for showers. At the very least, it'll make you look both ways next time you cross the road.