Four friends travel to Mexico for "fun in the sun," but when they go exploring an old Mayan ruin they get much more than they bargained for: "Carnivorous vines try to ensnare the friends in their deadly tendrils, forcing the group into a brutal battle for survival," reads one synopsis of "The Ruins" (2008). No, I'm not kidding. "The Ruins" is indeed about man-eating vines and words like "parody" and "spoof" are conspicuously absent from every description of this film. This is a serious movie -- as serious as a movie about killer vines can be.
The reason why most Sci-Fi Channel original movies -- such as "Alien Apocalypse" (2005) and "Android Apocalypse" (2006) -- are so horrible is that they handle their subject with self-amused irony. These are pitiful attempts at creating a movie that's 'so bad, it's good.'
But then there are filmmakers who think they're creating some sort of horror masterpiece like Carter Smith, director of the unintentionally hilarious film "The Ruins." His film is a marvelous accident in bad filmmaking.
Two couples vacation in Mexico where they just happen to run into a German (with a ridiculously fake accent) who just happens to ask them to come along on an archeological dig at a secret location. The film starts off with what is slowly becoming a trend in modern horror -- creating an atmosphere of hyper-realism and relying on ambient terror rather than cheap scares. Someone falls, breaks a bone -- unnerving sequences that are chilling simply because they are so ordinary. This sort of atmosphere is something that would ideally make a great horror picture, but just because modern horror has learned this little trick doesn't mean most films won't regress back into formulaic creature-feature formulas after the first half an hour or so.
Cue the carnivorous vines. The foliage was introduced as sentient creatures through atrocious CGI over what looked like well-hidden crew members shaking mounds of ivy back and forth--ooh spooky! Luckily Smith has a backup plan. If his moving-ivy trick doesn't scare the audience, he can always go for the gross-out factor.
What follows is a scene that managed to make amputation hilarious. After the group takes a vote about cutting off one character's broken and possibly infected limbs, the medical student in the bunch assures everyone that his half-conscious patient wouldn't feel anything, as his back is supposedly broken. A good five minutes of tortured screaming follow. Then Smith presents us with a coup de grace -- the girlfriend tearfully asks: "He felt that, didn't he?" There is not a drop of sarcasm there, either. Admittedly, It's hard to tell; this nameless gaggle of mannequin actors can barely squeeze out more than two emotions: terror and gravity). If this movie was purposely cheesy, it would be utterly unwatchable, but apparently because it was based on a novel-turned-screenplay by Scott B. Smith, director Carter Smith (no relation) was constantly aiming for some sort of deep, resonating poignancy.
I can already see Carter Smith pitching the sequel: "'Carnivorous Vines on a Plane' -- "It's going to be a dash of 'Snakes on a Plane,' but mostly it's going to be like Titanic. Love, lust, loss -- except instead of a ship, it's a plane. And instead of an iceberg it's -- get this -- carnivorous vines."
