The Ruins (Unrated Edition)

When The Ruins opens, it doesn’t look quite so promising. We’ve got two American couples sharing a vacation in Mexico. They’re reaching the end of their stay and are getting a tad bored with the sun and surf. Enter the foreign stranger who happens to have access to a secret archeological dig and invites the foursome along. Immediately I begin to suspect I’ve seen it all before. I figure the guy’s going to lead them to some isolated torture garden where sadistic maniacs will have their way with the tourists. As the stranger leads them further and further into the isolated jungles, my suspicions are getting that much stronger. When they arrive to find a Mayan pyramid, I’m starting to think that this just might be something different, after all. The group is greeted by some locals who don’t exactly roll out the welcome wagon. They kill the “red shirt” in the group, who we never really got to meet, and herd the group up to the plateau atop the temple. The locals surround the structure and appear unwilling to allow them to leave. At the top they discover the stranger’s brother, who was the one working the site, dead. They discover a shaft that goes deep into the heart of the structure, where they hear what sounds like a cell phone ringing. Attempts to reach the phone don’t go very well, and before long two of them are wounded. That’s when the fun starts. The vine is attracted to the blood and begins to invade the wounds. Before long it becomes clear that the locals weren’t herding them to attack them, but to quarantine them because they had touched the vine. The film allows for some clever moments as the survivors contend with the ancient creature.

While the characters are pretty much interchangeable and underdeveloped, it doesn’t seem to matter that much. There isn’t any standout performance to talk about here, but the totality of the work is effective. Truth be told, you won’t get to know them very well, and it will be awfully hard to really tell them apart. Still, they become as much of a threat to themselves as the vine. Here’s where the film escapes the camp possibilities. It is the characters themselves who inflict the most damage and provide for the creep factor. The Ruins also manages to avoid being an unnecessarily bloody film. It’s not overly gory, particularly by today’s standards. That’s not to say there aren’t bloody moments. Some makeshift surgery produces a fair amount of spillage. One of the creepiest scenes I’ve encountered in a while has one of the women obsessed with the vine’s invasion of her body. You will be creeped out, not merely grossed out. The CG effects are convincing and don’t look comical, a trap this film had to tread a fine line to avoid. Credit director Carter Smith for keeping his path clear of the many obstacles that could have easily led the film towards the aforementioned comical throwaway film.

Some of this material also appears in my Intotheblu.com review of the standard DVD.

Video

The Ruins is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1. The transfer takes full advantage of some wonderful locations and cinematography. Colors are pretty natural. There is an early beach vista that is almost as nice as the HD version I found on the Blu-ray. Once we leave the beach, the rich green colors and textures offer incredibly life-like representations. There’s a nice use of contrast at the temple location. The plants themselves are vivid. The contrast of the green vine against the red flowers is exceptional. If the transfer is weak anywhere, it is in the black levels. I was very disappointed in the level of shadow detail of any kind. Fortunately this is one of those horror films that doesn’t rely a lot on darkness to be scary. I watched both the Blu-ray and standard DVD versions of the film and found these dark scenes to be identical in quality, while the normally lit elements are far superior in HD.

Audio

The Dolby Digital 5.1 track delivers without ever overdoing things. Each location is accompanied with the appropriate level of ambient sounds and dialog levels to paint that particular place and time with both splashes of realism and just enough trickle of atmosphere. I won’t say the sub offered a ton of response, but the film does have its moments. In every respect the sound is a wonderful compement to what the video is providing.

There is an Audio Commentary with director Carter Smith and editor Jeff Betancourt. Carter, in particular, has a lot to say, and I found his comments to be both entertaining and more informative than usual.

Special Features

So, what is the unrated version? I did not see the original film at the box office, but it appears likely that this “unrated” version is simply a collection of extended bloody scenes which neither make nor break the film.

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Deleted Scenes:  There are 5 new, extended, or alternate scenes here. You have the option to play with or without commentary (except for the last one) and there is a useful “play all” option as well. Apparently one of the “unrated” changes was a different ending on the home release. If you saw the film at the theaters, you get the ending you saw then here as a deleted scene. Having not seen the original version of the film, I found the ending provided here to be satisfying.

Making The Ruins: I have to say it feels a little odd watching producer Ben Stiller talking about a horror film. I guess I have him too well defined as a comic to not feel like something’s out of whack. There are plenty of interview bites here, but you won’t get more than some upbeat chatter. They acknowledge the campy history of maneating plants in the cinema. Hey, they tell us they don’t even have a problem calling it a horror film. Go figure. It runs for about 14 minutes.

Creeping Death: The star of the film for some will be the vine itself. One of the crew members accurately expounds that if you don’t believe in the vine, you won’t believe the story. This is a more comprehensive look at the artwork and CG work that went into creating the killer vines. It runs about 15 minutes.

Building The Ruins: The mesa at the top of the pyramid and the temple itself are nice set pieces. The combination of practical location enhanced with CG makes it a convincing setting.

Trailer

Final Thoughts

I found this film to be one of the more original horror efforts that I’ve seen in at least a little while. The script is clever, and the atmosphere manages to convince without requiring much out of the actors themselves. They’re merely another set piece here, and the true genius has to go to the set designers and the director for using these pieces in such an inspired way. I was particularly impressed with how the film avoids laying too much on the creature, instead making the characters’ own flaws and weakness as much a part of their ultimate plight as anything else. When I sat down to watch this movie, I wanted a horror film that didn’t look like 20 others I’ve seen recently. “That’s all I wanted.”