The Ruins (2008)
Why are plants green? Chlorophyll. They grow this substance because they’re living solar panels which convert pure sunlight into energy through a process called photosynthesis. You are now smarter thanks to my blog. Unless you learned that in school in which case fuck you, smartass.
If they didn’t have this green stuff, how on earth would they get their food? A bunch of kids are going to find out in this fairly watchable and entertaining horror about a secret mayan temple and the not exactly hospitable inhabitants inside. Sadly it’s let down by messy structure, tedious dialogue and an emptiness of imagination in the paranormal zone.
This is a slow starter. The first 20 minutes feel uncomfortably overstretched, dragging along before anything happens. Even after the flick suddenly rears its brutality, it then reverts to more romantic posturing and pretentious character squabbles, with a long wait for the next delivery of some disaster or action that moves things along. If you’re gonna watch this, get used to this.
The camera work also feels sluggish, distant, and unprepared, and there’s a distinct lack of design somewhere in the story where suspense seems to be forgotten and nearly every scene is either too long, too short, or should have been cut out entirely. That’s not to say there’s no good parts; the scene of the kids being extracted out of the well as the enemy crawls around them was admittedly a nail-biting and well executed moment, and there’s more in store.
The lack of innovation with the four friends is also a miss. This isn’t the fault of the actors at all – if anything they’re above average, most notably Jonathan Tucker who creates an impressive display of stress and angst, but all leave a surprisingly good impression, clearly being very experienced and capable in their jobs.
Well, this is a pretty basic survival horror. While it’s not exactly terrible, and definitely superior to a lot of trash, the main drawback is the sloppy storytelling and editing, with the arbitrary super-abilities of the antagonist as another strong negative, ironically helping to render meaningless the terror it threatened to create.
4/10
Possession Media 