Ruinen

A surprisingly decent pulp horror outing with its roots (no pun intended) purely in the 1930s: this is based on a contemporary novel which I'm convinced must have been inspired by the Clark Ashton Smith short story The Seed from the Sepulchre (coincidentally one of my favourite stories ever). The story is simple, an age-old tale about naïve teenagers on a holiday from hell, not dissimilar to PARADISE LOST in its own way. Once the characters find themselves trapped in an ancient Mayan temple and at the menace of a most unusual monster it really picks up.

The horror is a neat mix of slow-building fear with graphic surgical gore, a la HOSTEL. It certainly doesn't pull its punches, with one graphic set-piece particularly difficult to forget afterwards. There are plenty of other chilling moments, like the bits involving mimicry or a later scene that literally gets under your skin. The youthful cast is typically dull, with only the German character provoking interest, but that doesn't matter when the story and pacing are so well achieved. It's amazing what a little originality can do: compare this to something like the exceptionally dull PROM NIGHT remake and you'll see what I mean.

A group of young friends travelling in Mexico, are convinced by a young German man named Mathias, to accompany them to an archaeological dig.

I honestly can't believe that this film dates all the way back to 2008, I watched it when it was first released, and have never forgotten a few of the scenes, one in particular.

If you're a fan of films along the same lines as Paradise lost and Green inferno, then I think you may well enjoy this, the horror comes more from gory sequences, rather than jump scares. Some of the visuals are pretty gross.

It's far from perfect, it takes an age to get going, and there are more cliches than you can even count, plus a set of characters that are a little difficult to like.

Despite its many flaws, I still enjoyed it, it's not without originality, and the horror moments still hold up.

Time to invest in some weedkiller.

7/10.

I have to tell you from the minute that I saw The Ruins trailer, I knew I wanted to see this movie, we've been needing a good horror movie, especially for 2008. So I didn't hesitate to see the movie today; I'm actually a little disappointed. Now with the pro's, we've got an awesome plot, it's a little unoriginal with the gore and the shock(ever since Hostel came out, it's hard to get a little more shocked) but the plot works and makes the movie extremely disturbing and makes you move around your seat and uncomfortable. The only problem I had was the characters, they were either very dis-likable or didn't even have any depth, so you didn't care wither they lived or died. It's a typical horror movie mistake, characters are neglected and we are left guessing, but this is still worth the watch for the non-stop scares.

A four friends are on vacation in Mexico, just enjoying the time, getting drunk, dancing, the usual stuff. But when another man, a Greek named Mathias, invites them to explore the famous ruins of the land, he's also looking for his brother who disappeared there, so he wants to see if he's still there. When the group goes there, they are confronted by a tribe who cannot speak English or Spanish, and when one of the guys touches the vines, he is shot and killed, the others are told to get up onto the pyramid that's covered in vines. They have to figure a way out while being trapped there by the armed tribe, but something has gotten "under their skin".

The Ruins is a decent horror movie, the best I've seen? For the year, sadly, yes, which I'm hoping there will be some promising horror movies to come up. I'm just disappointed with the characters and their development, the girls were obnoxious and the guys were stupid. But the effects were cool and creepy, I think we all have that fear of these flesh eating viruses, so this concept worked. I also liked that it wasn't so jumpy and it didn't try so hard to scare. I would recommend it for a watch, but I'm just warning you that it's not what it's all hyped up to be.

6/10

One of the better horror films of recent years, is creepy and scary and the sort of thing that makes your skin crawl. Its a simple story- several tourists go to a temple in the Mexican jungle that happens to be off the beaten path. There is of course something there and the locals are not happy about visitors. I won't say more since I'm going tempted to tell you way too much...which would be too much since the plot is simple. Its almost too simple. The reason the film works is that the film has decent characters and it does things that are decidedly not your typical horror movie choices. Its short, its sweet and it works. Its not perfect, there are one or two things I didn't like, but on the whole its a very good very creepy film. Frankly while Brazil got upset about Touristas a year because it might make think people about going there, Mexico should worry since this film will make anyone think again about going into ancient ruins. (7.5 ish out of 10 on the horror scale because thinking about the screams makes my skin crawl)

This is one of those films where IMDB rating is well below than what it should have been. Yes, it is not the best horror film out there but it was certainly good. The story was not boring, there were some very clever scenes and the acting was not bad for a horror film. I actually enjoyed it throughout.