The Ruins

The Ruins

2008

Directed by Carter Smith

This unsettling film follows the story of four university students on vacation in Mexico. They are bored with the resort they are staying at and tag along with a new German to an archaeological dig site. This proves to be a horrible mistake as the ruins are overrun with deadly vines with a mind of their own and a taste for flesh.

I read the original novel when it first came out because I was a fan of Smith's A Simple Plan. Where that novel and film showed what depths of greed "nice" people would steep to, this novel showed how paranoia and fear could rip a group of friends apart. The film of A Simple Plan was a great adaptation of the novel. The film of The Ruins is a good film but it focuses more on the aggressiveness of the vines rather than the relationships between the people. In some ways I felt the film showed way too much (one example is Amy thinking that the vines have invaded her body), in the book this is presented as possibly the character just going insane from the situation.

Rustin Allison