The Ruins is an intriguing horror film
with a pretty unusual premise. Four
American students traveling in Mexico meet a European couple who persuade them
to join in on an informal expedition to a fabled Mayan pyramid deep in the
jungle. Once there, however, they find
the site surrounded by armed villagers who immediately kill one of them and
will not let the rest leave. Forced to
climb to the top of the pyramid, the group slowly begins to realize that the
creeping vines that cover it are not only aggressive but hungry for meat. As with most survival movies, you can end up
wasting a lot of time making wise suggestions that the characters don’t follow
unless you decide to just suspend disbelief and go along with the story. With its man-versus-nature theme and
slow-building suspense, I liked that the film lacked explanations, not only for
the vine itself but for the odd protective/submissive relationship it seems to
enjoy with the villagers. They claim to
be keeping the vine quarantined so it’s can’t spread, but there’s something
cultish about their actions too, as if they must make periodic sacrifices to
the man-eating plant in order to placate it.
It’s not a masterpiece, but in a world clogged with cheap, unoriginal horror
flicks pouring off the assembly line, the effectively menacing tone of The Ruins seems a refreshing surprise.
No comments:
Post a Comment