Weekly Review -- Dare to dig deep

The Ruins (2008) -- A strange example of a disturbing, yet instantly forgettable horror film, this offering is mostly a rehashed warning against traveling abroad à la Turistas and Hostel. Contrary to the latter two movies, though, the underlying fatalistic note running through it provides effectiveness and is the source of the movie's true horror. Four American students, tempted by a possibly adventurous last day in Mexico, decide to visit an ancient Mayan temple with another tourist, whose girlfriend is one of the archaeologists working on a dig there. Once they arrive, a banding group of locals will not let them leave and are literally ready to kill to keep them on site. A few injuries, supernatural occurrences and dead bodies later, the predicament becomes all too clear... The main problem I had with this film, apart from its numerous plotholes, were the unsympathetic and chauvinistic characters. Jeff (Jonathan Tucker), whose upcoming medical training seems to have skewered his sense of himself and his self-worth, quickly takes over as leader and starts putting his girlfriend Amy (Jenna Malone) and her best friend Stacy (Laura Ramsey) in danger, while his friend and Stacy's boyfriend Eric (Shawn Ashmore) barely mutters a syllable. As for the girls, they are much too needy and gullible to say no to their boyfriends' demands. Amy is the one who shows some strength and assertiveness, but those traits are too little, too late; besides, the situation would force her to stand up for herself eventually, anyway, so the sudden jolt of independence does not even count as character development. As for the plotholes, let us just say that there are more holes in the movie than in the road that our not-so-clever tourists take to get to the dig.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

A gaping blunder is the obvious one -- when the friends arrive at the site, the locals pop up and start standing guard day and night, preventing the curse from ever leaving its roots. As ludicrous as that entire premise is, I am sure that the site could have been isolated earlier, in a more practical way. Yes, I am aware that there would have been no movie without the initial story, but, had the locals built some sort of barrier in the first place, they would have saved both themselves and foreigners a lot of grief. Use your brains, people, unless you are of the do-it-yourself mentality, which is what we get in The Ruins.

Another goof stems from the fact that, based on the very beginning of the movie, this group was not the first group of people that went missing at the temple. Has anyone -- the police, local or foreign governments, ANYONE -- ever begun to wonder just where these throngs of people are? Apparently, they come from all over the world, so how come there has never been any kind of search put in motion?

**END OF SPOILERS**

All these and other errors contribute to the movie being merely passable. However, it is the deeply unsettling sense of isolation and invisibility that brings potential to the movie. Even though it does not quite manage to balance out the negatives, it does provide the crucial element of claustrophobia that makes the movie worth watching. If you like your horror cinema on the creepy side, this is the movie to see.

5/10