Scathing Movie Review or Jena Malone's Come Down in the World

So Laura and John likely won't clap and yell GOODY when I choose to return from the blogosphere dead with a scathing review of The Ruins, because they both thought this movie was ok/entertaining. I on the other hand, left the theater determined to protect people I like from this movie. (Our differences in movie tolerance lead me to believe that, if Laura viscerally believes that Battlefield Earth is one of the worst things ever to happen to film, then watching Battlefield Earth myself will likely physically kill me dead.)

The Ruins is based on the book of the same name by Scott Smith. Much to my surprise when I looked up the book on amazon after the movie, I found out that Smith also wrote A Simple Plan, which also went to the big screen. That movie was quite good, in my opinion, if jacked up and depressing at the same time. In comparison to that movie (and in general), The Ruins was a flop.

The basic premise is that 4 pretty Americans (including Jena Malone, who has done much better work than this) go on vacation to Mexico. They run into some German guy and are convinced to go along with him to find his brother at some archaeological dig where he has chased the latest Sweet Poontang of his life. They get to the dig and madcap gory high jinks rule the day.

I should note that I expected this movie to be bad. I was hoping it would be so bad it would swing back around to good. It never built up enough momentum to do that. It didn't build up much of anything, except an easy segue into The Ruins 2: Freaks vs. Greeks. The funniest moment of the movie may be a tie between:

• A somewhat pompous dick of a young medical student declaring to his terrified friends that "Americans do not just disappear in foreign countries while on vacation!!!" Think Natalee Holloway would beg to differ with you, Mr. "America, FUCK YEAH!!!!".
• The discovery that the same character hailed from Winnetka, IL. This joke is most understandable to people from the Chicagoland area. The rest of you can just take our word that finding out a white pompous dick med student comes from Winnetka is just about as surprising as learning that Karl Rove was sent back from 2037 by Cyberdyne Industries to ruin America.
  

All in all my reactions to this movie fluctuated between "WHY?" and "SICK." and "This will never end." Not to mention a certain flower scene melded with the scene from Carrie where she starts killing everyone's ass at the prom and that was stuck in my brain for about 2 solid days after. There was very little purpose for the things that happened, other than to shock and awe the audience with blood. Which is really a shame because even with the somewhat lame setup it could have been a real mindfuck of interpersonal dynamics and what people will think and then do in order to survive. I wonder if the book does a better job of this - Stephen King seemed to think so anyway.

(JEBUS HAROLD I just figured out why Stephen King loves this book so much - the premise (and possibly the execution, I don't know) is basically his short story The Raft but on land with plants instead of water. I wonder if that guy jacks off to his own stories.)

There are worse movies. Turistas was worse. Hitcher 2 was worse. Seeing it free on cable probably wouldn't damage your soul the way Jeepers Creepers damaged mine. But don't spend the full price of admission on it. Unless maybe it's Winnetka Pride Week.