The Ruins product reviews

This film was an attempt to fill an almost empty niche; a daytime horror/thriller. And it did quite well considering the disadvantage that light provides. It is very difficult to instil the same kind of fear if you have perfect vision. Darkness is where the deepest darkest creations are meant to hide.

But we have a group of tourists, that upon visiting a Mayan temple covered in creeping plants, one of them is killed and the rest are trapped there by gun-toting villagers. Climbing to the top of the temple, they hear their salvation; a cell phone. But they soon find that the cell phone exposes the true threat to the group.

Hindered by accidents that lead to broken backs and legs, they are trapped, and immobilised in a small area, with a slow moving, but strong carnivorous threat.

The best things that worked to this films advantage was the use of light, and a realistic threat. Realising that something is trying to kill you, which you can see clearly, but knowing you can't escape; you can only fight until you don't have the strength to any more.

It was still a hard film to get into, purely because it was so unconventional for a thriller, but it was unique. Although, it is not the sort of film you will be re-watching over and over again, you will enjoy the novelty.

I personally thought this movie was a bit of a pre-historic little shop of horrors. Although I don't know any of the cast from other movies, they acted the parts well. Some of them were 'typical' thriller movie moves, pauses and lines. The music and sound effects were pretty typical of a thriller, although the flowers and the noises they were making were some what unexpected.

With the case blurb claiming 'with an ending so disturbing it will grab hold of you and never let go.' I was rather disappointed, although I am not big on thrillers and horrors, I spent most of the time yawning and predicting who would die next and of what. The most edge-seating part of the movie for me was when they amputated Matheas's legs, I found myself wanting to cover my eyes while getting closer to the tv to see what they would do.

I think the most disturbing part of this movie is that I have a Swedish friend called Mattias (said Matheas) who looks like the actor in the movie. Normally when I watch something like this, I would have nightmares about it and not be able to sleep but I found myself sleeping like a baby.

I'm not a great one when it comes to thrillers, alas I thought I'd give the ruins a shot. You'll probably guess I'm more of an action/drama girl in this review, but at least I can say I've given the thriller genre a go!

I thought I coped well with this film. It definately kept me on the edge of my chair with the fear and disgust factor. The thought of vines ravaging my body terrifies the hell out of me. Apart from the killer vines, I thought this movie was rather slow and didn't really have a good story line to it.

The blurb on the case says it "has an ending so disturbing it will grab hold of you and never let go." I disagree with that statement, I found it was predictable, and for a thriller it could've had a better ending than it did.