The Ruins (2008)
Directed by Carter Smith
Starring Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone, Laura Ramsey, Shawn Ashmore, Joe Anderson

When this movie first came out, just by watching the trailer, it didn’t do much for me, other than to make me think it was another lackluster attempt from Hollywood at making a cheap horror movie. So I never bothered with it while it was at the theater. But by the time it hit DVD, I had already been hearing that it was actually pretty good. So against our better judgement, we took that journey to The Ruins. And now I regret not seeing it in the theater, even better with a packed house.

The beginning of the movie starts out sort of like I expected, with a bunch of young college kids on a vacation, full of partying and drinking. This was not doing anything to change what I had originally thought. They meet up with a German guy who tells them that his brother is out investigating an old Mayan ruin, and wanted to know if they’d like to join him when he goes out to meet him the next day. Looking for some extra excitement at the end of their vacation, they agree.

The next day, they find the ruin which is sort of a pyramid-like tower. But right after they get there, they are surrounded by locals with guns, screaming at them and pointing at the tower behind them. Their vacation ends there. Because of the language barrier, they’re not really sure what these people are yelling and screaming at them. But with the guns pointing at them, they start to climb the ruins for safety and this is where the movie turns into something much more than I was expecting. It’s hard to go into greater detail without giving too much away, so we’ll just leave the plot at that.

I was really impressed with the acting here. Since they didn’t go with the usual stereotyped college characters, the actors seemed more like real people. I felt this brought more realism to them. When they start to realize their situation, they can’t believe that this can happen. Things like this just don’t happen to people. This just shows people that once you get outside the USA, you really never know what can happen.

The cast is lead by Jena Malone, who was Donnie Darko’s girlfriend, Shawn Ashmore, who has been Iceman in all three of the X-Men movies, and Jonathan Tucker, who was in the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003). I think real stand out here is Laura Ramsey. She’s been in a couple other horror movies, like Venom (2005) and The Covenant (2006), but here she really performs some incredible scenes, which will make the audience squirm with pain and sympathy.

The other thing that really got my attention was the special make up effects. Since most of the effects are done in broad daylight, it’s pretty tough to hide bad effects. These effects are top-notch, very real looking and highly effective. This is a great example of using simple effects (though I know they were not simple to do) that would cause a reaction from the audience, not to mention giving a lasting impact.

I am kind of surprised that this film didn’t spawn a bunch of sequels (which I’m actually kind of glad) because it is a simple story that could be beat to death. The fact that this one is actually really well made, I am surprised that we don’t hear too much about this one any more either. This title should be one that more people know about. Which is why I’m posting this review.