#the ruins 2008

[fanofspooky]

Scream Queen - Jena Malone

Requested by @cultofcreatures

[realcardiac]

Inktober day 3- The Ruins (2008). Looove this movie! Maybe I should read the book at some point.

[arkashas]

The Ruins (2008) dir. Carter Smith

[wanderingnork]

The Ruins

I give this an 8/10. Summary: Four college students, on a spring break trip to Mexico, take up an invitation from a new friend who offers to show them to a newly-discovered Mayan pyramid. Of course, it all goes horribly wrong, because there is a very, very good reason that this pyramid stayed lost.

The plants covering the pyramid are carnivorous, invasive, and possibly somewhat sentient. Visitors are quickly snared through a combination of auditory lures and traps, fast-moving vines, and a nasty habit of taking root in the living bodies of animals. If you take one step onto the pyramid or brush against a single leaf, chances are good you’re already dead.

As is usual in this kind of story, the locals know what’s up. They’ve taken effective measures to stop visitors from getting to the site and prevent the spread of the vines. When all else fails, they make sure that no one can leave once they’re infected. They’ve clearly been managing this for generations: they’re Mayan, descendants of the folks who built the infested pyramid, so they have this down to a science. Up until the foolhardy white Americans entered the scene, everything was going just fine.

If what I’m describing so far sounds pretty stereotypical...well, it is. The Ruins doesn’t bring a lot of novelty to the table. It’s a copy-pasted plot from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Friday the 13th. You can see everything coming. Decisions were often arbitrary or loosely founded in anything you might call sense. Shallow and frivolous, the characters are given just enough depth for us to feel bad for them, but not so much that we get angry when they suffer.

What made me enjoy this so much is that the threat isn’t a ghost, a family of cannibals, a murderer, or a demon. It’s a plant. A huge plant that serves as both setting and antagonist, the way that a haunted house does in a good ghost story.

Cut for length.

The movie felt claustrophobic. There was absolutely no way out: no exorcism, no car to drive away on, nothing. There were only the vines, coming closer and closer. If they got off the pyramid, death was waiting on the ground. Eventually, the characters weren’t even safe in their own skins. They were being attacked from the inside out. Where were they going to run when the killer had taken root in their bones?

Additionally, the movie did a great job of making me feel for the characters over the course of the movie. By the end of the movie, the shallowness that had me rolling my eyes at the start was what made them tragic. They were flighty, silly people who wanted a trivial good time; because they made a series of thoughtless decisions, they died horribly. I pitied them.

And oh, boy, was it ever horrible. The 2000s was a decade that brought us a lot of impressively vicious horror and spawned the subgenre of “torture porn,” with movies like Saw and Hostel leading the charge. Outside that genre, things were still pretty brutal. REC, 28 Days Later, The Descent, Drag Me To Hell, Eden Lake, Silent Hill, Martyrs, Final Destination, The Ring...a parade of horror movies of all stripes that put their protagonists through the most horrible things possible. Self-mutilation, horrifically creative torture, the works. If the protagonist survived, which a lot of them didn’t, then they came out bloody, filthy, maimed, and probably driven to madness by their terrible experiences.

The Ruins is absolutely no exception to the rule. The plants aren’t out here wielding human instruments of torture, but they have their own insidious methods of messing with their victims’ minds. Injuries needed tending, but no one had the proper tools. And I mean...what are you supposed to do when vines grow under your skin? Just leave them there?

A subtle note that I really liked, and want to point out for anyone else who watches this: at the start of the movie, the vines are all green, no flowers. By the end...there are just so many flowers.

Now, my one really, really big issue. There are two alternate endings to this movie. One of them, I understand why it was cut--it’s jarring and goes on a touch too long. The other...apparently the director thought that, after all of the messy, bloody, filthy pain that came before, was somehow too much of a downer.

Too much of a downer.

In the decade that brought us that list of movies I rattled off above. Most of which have endings that go beyond downer endings. I’ve either seen the movies on that list or read enough about them to know that I wouldn’t be able to handle them. I know what those endings are like! The ending of Saw has lived rent-free in my head for weeks now!

What planet did the director live on that the alternate ending was too much?

Look, the alternate ending to the Ruins is more thematically appropriate. I tried to track it down digitally with the alternate ending, but I couldn’t. It’s on youtube. If you watch this, have that up and ready to roll. Because I truly think it’s more appropriate and a more suitable closer to the movie.

Even if you don’t at first, well...maybe it’ll grow on you. ;)

Warnings: racism, self-harm, mutilation, medical procedures done poorly, blood and gore, asphyxiation, claustrophobia, gun violence, child death.

[cluedoenthusiast]

mini voices compilation part 1? [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6]

+ this entire interview which i didnt include

[redrcs]

Maine in May, 2008

[acid-witch-baby]

Heath Ledger’s joker is literally bae

“I can fix him” nah I want his crazy ass the way he is

[webdiggerxxx]

꧁★꧂

[wedgeantill]

2023 Halloween Marathon ↳ The Ruins (2008)

[feraltwinkseb]

2008 / 2016

[bereft-of-frogs]

I'm wondering if my longstanding refusal to watch the 2008 Clone Wars is contributing to my utter inability to comprehend all the 'star wars is RUINED' complaints.

if I can contentedly exist refusing to acknowledge the thing that 99% of the fandom considers to be essential canon, that makes up the majority of the fanworks, art, and posts, I think you can handle disregarding one self-contained, 8 episode series that takes place a hundred years before anything else if you really want to. I really think you're going to live.

[fanofspooky]

Scream King - Shawn Ashmore

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

SUMMARY: A leisurely Mexican holiday takes a turn for the worse when a group of friends and a fellow tourist embark on a remote archaeological dig in the jungle, where something evil lives among the ruins.

[knackeredforever]

We like to talk about reading comprehension a lot on this site but no one in the history of humankind has worse reading comprehension than the people who were convinced to join the military because of the metal gear games.

[deathnguts]

I’m not fun to watch serious slasher movies with because if you shit on the victims for reacting irrationally in a traumatizing situation then I’m exploding you with my mind

[iamthekarmapolice]

got invited to post work drinks last minute when this was planned 2 weeks ago and now i feel like they invited me out of politeness since i happened to be there when they were talking about it…..