Les ruines

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 like to think of myself as a connoisseur of horror movies having watched innumerous films during my 50 years on this planet. To see this little gem rated 5.9 when other movies that are complete pieces of bovine excrement, is truly incomprehensible. Do yourself a favor and watch this well-crafted film and you can thank me later.

I wasn't expecting too much going to see this, but knowing that it was an adaptation from a novel I figured it had to be a decent story at least. I was pleasantly surprised. It definitely wasn't your average 'horror' film, if you want recycled bullshit go see the travesty that is Prom Night. This is different. It literally got under my skin at a few parts and made me squirm, and that pretty tough to do to me. The story resembled a Stephen King-esquire short story. It was grim, unpleasant, and gory. It didn't use conventional scare tactics (which are so overdone these days) but used a tone of dread and hopelessness to get to the viewer. Check it out if your looking for that type of film, cheers

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.