I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

Movies So Bad They Make You Say "What In The Blazes Did I Just Watch?" 

The Ruins (2008) Australian American


This could have been called The Ruined, because it could have done that to everyone who starred in it. Other than that this movie was... excruciatingly dull. A big reason for that? Poor story, poor execution and, get this, Ben Stiller as executive producer. This film didn't stand a freaking chance.


I've already done a 'pissed off planet' movie this week but this was on the movie list on my DVR and it did have Joe Anderson so... I gave it a shot. If I'd had a gun, I'd REALLY have given it a shot. It's... it's just awful. You start with the basic pack of young people, the kind you want dead before the beginning credits end, and it just escalates. Is this a 'get them together in a remote place with no cell phone service and kill them off one by one' kind of movie? Yes. Yes it is.


Taking place during a summer vacation in Mexico four picture perfect college students have been partying their whole vacation. Poor, poor children. They decide, after meeting a German tourist Mattias (Joe Anderson) and his friend Dimitri to have just a little bit of culture for the last day of their vacation and travel to a Mayan temple, where Mattias wants to look for his brother Heinrich who is now missing. Ah, Mexico, no cell phone service right? It's okay, Mattias has a 'world phone'. I have absolutely no idea what that means.


After some time wasting footage of drinking, partying, morning after throwing up, and a long trek through the jungle we finally get the six of these people we care nothing about to the site of Mattias' brother's jeep. From there, yep, more trekking through the jungle. And one of our brainiac women has decided to do the whole trip in flip flops. Yup, they need to die quick. But they survive to reach the temple ruins. A whole big mess of Mayans then show up (I didn't think there were that many much less a whole mess of 'em.) and of course although they live in bloody Mexico they don't speak Spanish. Oh yeah, that's smart. They start screaming in Mayan (which is not translated which makes it just that much more annoying) at the young people, and brandish weapons at them when they try to approach. Cautiously Mattias shows the leader his cell phone with his brother's picture on it, which the guy promptly takes away from him. Smooth move. The Mayans then point their guns (awful advanced for people living in a Mexican jungle who don't speak Spanish) at the young people and, as Dimitri attempts to approach to speak, they shoot him with arrows AND bullets (their version of the 'double-tap' I guess) and the rest of the young idiots scramble up the ruins to get to the top. As long as they are touching the ruins and the vines surrounding it (ominous music goes here) the Mayans won't come close. If there was a good line in the whole thing it was one man asserting 'Four Americans can't just disappear in Mexico'. Umm, yeah, they can. It happens constantly. There are even websites devoted to the MONTHLY disappearances of tourists in Mexico.




Mattias' brother's stuff is there all right - but nobody is in sight. There is an excavation in the top complete with rope and pulleys to lower into the temple itself. In the dark below they hear a cell phone ringing. Mattias assures them that is his brother's phone and they must be down there. He volunteers to be lowered down. Bad move. The rope breaks, dashing him to the rock below but unfortunately for him, not quite killing him. One of the girls is lowered and also falls (they don't seem to learn anything here) and her leg is impaled by a sharp object which she pulls out (ouch). Mattias cannot feel anything below his waist so Joe Anderson's part is essentially now to lay still and moan a lot. They attempt to reason with the Mayans again (like I said they don't learn anything, the Mayans speak neither English nor Spanish) making one woman so mad so she grabs a piece of the covering vines and throws it at them like a moron, striking a young child in the chest. This makes all the Mayans go nuts, and they shoot the kid dead in front of his mother. Nice going Americans. So they are stuck on that temple unless they can recover the phone and get help. Skip ahead skip ahead vines start moving blah blah cell phone noise is being made by the vines themselves and they also mimic voices blah blah Mattias' legs are cut off and the vines carry them away blah blah nobody's coming blah blah the vines start to penetrate every opening in the young people's bodies (double ouch) blah blah. Blah.


Since they die one by one lets skip to the ending: The remaining man and woman decide on a ruse - he will sacrifice himself to the Mayans so she can get away. He pretends she is dead and when they train their weapons on him, she leaps up and runs away. She makes it to the jeep and drives away and the movie's over. Well, not quite. See Mattias conveniently met a couple of Greek tourists who show up the next day to reset the trap. Do we care? I know I didn't - all I was thinking was great, that stupid woman is going to spread that crap wherever she goes because there's no way it's not in her somewhere too. And fade away to... nothing unless you're unlucky to have the unrated version with alternate endings.


1. The woman drives away all right, but the vines under her skin (Told you so!) start crawling around under there and her eye fills with blood as the infection spreads quickly... 2. She gets away, dies and is buried - a caretaker is near her headstone when he starts whistling and the vines on her headstone (duh) whistle back as he reaches for them.....


And that's plenty pissed planet plots for now....