The Ruins weeds out the good stuff

The Screening Room
Specially written for What's Up

It’s common knowledge that horror films are not often ruined by their final scene. Instead, these cinematic scare-a-thons are usually poisoned much earlier on, by cheesy actors, poor writing or a budget so shallow even the most spine-tingling of intentions leave the audience doubled over in mocking glee after the reveal of a cartoonish-looking nemesis. It seems for every good one released, a hundred more are sent straight to Blockbuster’s ever-crowded shelves.

But when it comes to “The Ruins,” a tropically set fright flick that follows four 20-something friends on a journey to a deadly archaeological dig, no such excuses exist. The actors, many of them recognizable indie faves, are more than tolerable. The script is, for the most part, a different but decent adaptation of Scott Smith’s fearsome novel of the same name. And the setting is nothing new but surely nothing inconducive to a spooktastic celluloid experience.

But the ending? Without spoiling the not-so-fun, it is a cowardly cop-out of the cheapest variety not worthy of the silver screen.

Director Carter Smith tells the terrifying tale of Jeff (Jonathan Tucker), Amy (Jena Malone), Eric (Shawn Ashmore) and Stacy (Laura Ramsey), four WASPs on a Mexican vacation who make that predictably dumb decision to go on an adventure which sounds like fun but is obviously a storytelling sham to lead them to their untimely deaths. That’s right, one of those “Poltergeists don’t really exist, so we should definitely explore that dark and twisty mansion beneath the swirl of stormy clouds atop that deathly cliff. You know, the abandoned one no one has ever returned from alive?”

In this case, it’s an ancient, out-of-the-way hillside, set near a Mayan village deep in the jungles of Mexico. Trouble is, once they step foot on the vine-covered Ruins of no Return, those friendly neighborhood gun-weilding Mayans won’t let them step off of it.

Needless to say, their vacation goes from zero to grisly faster than you can say “martini with a twist.”

But the thing about their story is this: there’s no Norman Bates; no Hannibal Lecter; no Col. Mustard with the nunchucks in the billiard room.

Just a curse-bridled mound of dirt covered in the world’s most evil thicket, which wreaks havoc on the over-privileged, under-worked Spring Breakers Four.

Though its depiction tends to be a bit trippy (think a sea of green polka-dotted by red flowers vibrating and speaking in unison), Vinezilla is actually a successfully frightening antagonist, making you feel like one of its hellish tendrils might just crawl over the back of your theater seat and creep right into your ear canal.

It’s a startling and gruesome ride not for the mildly nauseous of heart, but this gardener’s nightmare that has viewers itching in their seats for all the right reasons leaves them exiting the theater stunned for all the wrong ones.

The movie lurches to a stop far too quickly and with a horrendous veer from the book’s original wrap-up, as if the filmmakers were trying to throw the audience a measly, unwanted bone. It takes a turn that sucks all the goosebumpish fun found in the book out in one single breath, a little like it’s your 11th birthday and you just got a hand-me-down pair of sneakers when what you really wanted was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comforter.

Total bummer, dude.

If you want to truly be haunted, the book is the way to go, but if you have the stomach to handle it and don’t mind a store-bought finish, buy the tickets, pop some popcorn and don’t forget your Roundup.