If left untreated, killer plant movies can spring up like weeds. There’s the Triffids of course and we certainly can’t forget the voracious appetite of Audrey II from The Little Shop Of Horrors, but by the time we got to the 2000s, films where horticulture turns gore-ticultire seemed a little thin on the ground. However, in 2008, twin threats from the plant kingdom rose up against us – but while M. Night Shyalaman’s infamous The Happening may have taken an oddly subtle (if that’s the word) crack at plant domination, Carter Smith’s The Ruins took an entirely different and more full-bloodied route.
Based on Scott B. Smith’s 2006 novel of the same name, The Ruins instead takes the form of a vacation-gone-wrong thriller that soon morphs into full blown body horror once the plot slams into gear and while this tale of quarantine, fear and self mutilation may not be mentioned much these days, this is one killer plant movies that not only grows on you; it grows in you.
As like many young couples before them and many young couple after them, we find the group of Jeff, Amy, Eric and Stacy enjoying the sun, sea and probable sex of a vacation in Mexico. However, as we get to watch them sun themselves in paradise, there seems to be cracks forming in their various relationships. Rather serious med student Jeff seems to be unaware that his girlfriend Amy not only doesn’t seem to want to do anything he wants to, but the flirty nature she exhibits behind his back suggests that she might have a history of sleeping around behind his back. This makes her best friend Stacy nervous as it makes her unsure whether if she can trust her own boyfriend, Eric, around her.
Near the end of their trip, they bump into German tourist Mathias who befriends them and suggests they join him as he travels into the jungle to try to find his brother whose last known location is at an archaeological dig at a remote Mayan temple. The gang agrees (reluctantly in the case of Amy) to go and soak up the sights, but not long after arriving at the eerily deserted temple, things start to rapidly tip into the realms of disaster. Firstly, while all of Mathias’ brother’s stuff is still on top of the structure, he is nowhere to be found and worse yet, when the group try to leave, they are stopped by a panicky bunch of armed Mayans who won’t let them leave and forces them at distance to remain on the temple.
They soon discover why. The weird vines that cover large amounts of the temple is not only alive, but predatory and will either ensnared you, or creepier yet, crawl inside your wounds if you aren’t careful and eat your flesh from within. Soon the group find themselves quarantined with the killer vines and discover with a mounting sense of horror that this ravenous planet has all manner of sneaky tricks to lure them to a grisly fate.
While I admittedly have not read Scott B. Smith’s source novel, I do have it on good authority that its a relentlessly grim read full of grisly asides and many downbeat turns and while there’s been some inevitable changes from page to screen (the ending has certainly been lightened up a bit), that nasty spitefulness still remains when the vines start stalking their prey. However, no matter how nasty the film gets, The Ruins ultimately blooms or withers on whether or not you think the idea of killer vines can actually be taken seriously. As it stated before, while killer plants and vines can blossom everywhere from Jumanji to The Evil Dead, it may be simply just to unbelievable a foe for some people to take as a credible threat no matter how hard the Smiths push their respective versions. But if the thought of a dead body being clumsily dragged into the undergrowth by leafy vines brings more of a chuckle than a gasp of horror, maybe The Ruins might not be the best destination for you.
For the rest of us, the film goes all in to try and make the botanical threat something tangible. The fact that the site is guarded by a tribe of Mayans seemingly dedicated to stopping the vine getting spread to the rest of the world ups the stakes even if it’s never explained why they let people get to the temple in the first place, or why they just don’t burn the crafty plant into oblivion. Similarly, the plants themselves are treated in a very stripped-back kind of way that forgoes the typical snapping, venus fly trap sort of design in favor of something more insidious.
These examples of petulant plants basically worm their way under your skin and and hollow you out from the inside and even if you manage to excruciatingly yank them out by hand, they still leave their spores inside which grow, thrive and wriggle visibly under the skin.
This aspect of the film works nicely as the filmmakers strive to reveal just how these flowery bastards operate in a more staggered form and the revelation that they can mimic other sounds like a ringing phone or human speech really does strike home just how fucked they really are.
It’s something of a shame then, that the characters are fairly standard representations of the type of young adults found within the survival horror genre. We watch them drink, dance and go through the usual soap opera stuff as we find that Jeff and Amy aren’t exactly on solid, relationship ground, but I wouldn’t exactly call them a likable bunch. In fact, when the shit hits the fan and the stress and fear starts to pick them apart, their behaviour change doesn’t exactly feel like much of a switch. Jonathan Tucker plays Jeff so intense, you get the feeling that he’d be more than happy to attempt a leg amputation with a rock, a knife and no anesthetic even if their wasn’t killer vines eating their flesh and Jena Malone, Laura Ramsey and Shawn Ashmore do the usual line of hysteria/rage/fear thing that these types of films specialise in without really reinventing the wheel. However, the film ultimately treats them so badly, that even though they’re all basic character tropes, you do still feel some empathy for them, especially when they’re ripping burrowing vines out of the wounds in their legs and arms. In fact, the genuinely nasty DIY surgery bits go a long way toward making The Ruins memorable even though so much of the film follows standard movie clichés and the usual messages to quit screwing with nature.
A pretty engrossing premise collides with some fairly standard plotting to give us a film that certainly comes with its fair share of grisly moments. However, even with its gleefully callous treatment of its hapless characters, once The Ruins ends, chances are it’ll recede from the memory like the tide. Still, if nothing else, it’s given us a whole new meaning to the phrase “do it for the vine”…
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