53.8%
Based on 28 Reviews
Movie Info
Released:
April 4, 2008
Runtime:
1hr 31min
Director:
Carter Smith
Writer:
Scott B. Smith
Cast:
Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone, Shawn Ashmore, Laura Ramsey, Joe Anderson
Rating:
R for strong violence and gruesome images, language, some sexuality and nudity.
Plot:
A group of friends whose leisurely Mexican holiday takes a turn for the worse when they, along with a fellow tourist embark on a remote archaeological dig in the jungle, where something evil lives among the ruins.
87.5% St. Paul Pioneer Press Chris Hewitt
If you're into grim, relentless drama that acknowledges the grief that comes with unspeakable tragedy (the recent The Descent comes to mind), then you are in luck.
80.0% Coming Soon Ryan Rotten
Packed with the concentrated dread that made your skin crawl in the novel.
75.0% Boston Globe Wesley Morris
I jumped legitimately at least twice, covered my eyes during most of the amateur on-site surgeries, and felt the pit of my stomach tighten up.
75.0% Richmond Times-Dispatch Daniel Neman
The idea of the story and the well-handled gore create a high level of the desired ickiness.
75.0% San Antonio Express-News Larry Ratliff
Finally, a horror-thriller that freaks you out and creeps you out without making you downshift your brain into moron mode.
74.0% E! Online Alex Markerson
This is a tense, squirm-inducing experience, and about as scary as a film about a killer plant could possibly be.
70.0% Contact Music Blake French
With One Missed Call, Shutter, and Prom Night delivering sell-out, watered down, PG-13 thrills, The Ruins is a breath of fresh air, and certainly not a horror movie that's easy to forget.
70.0% IGN Chris Carle
Not since Little Shop of Horrors have plants taken such a front seat in film, but The Ruins brings the foliage back… with a vengeance.
68.0% Indianapolis Star Robert Hammerle
While not living up to the intriguing trailers that have been playing for the past several months, The Ruins is interesting, horrifying and often visually repellent.
62.5% Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
It's a shame that The Ruins cops out with an ending that departs from the downbeat resolution of the novel, the result of misguided studio tampering.
62.5% Newsday Gene Seymour
The usual gore-and-gristle fare, but this one serves it up with a tad more suggestiveness and smarts.
60.0% Canoe.ca Kevin Williamson
At times revelatory in its repulsiveness, it's also frightfully well-acted and excruciatingly wound.
56.0% A.V. Club Scott Tobias
In compressing the novel down to a sloppy abridgement, the film fails to capture the eerie portent of its setting.
50.0% Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) Jeff Vice
The Ruins offers further proof that what works on the printed page doesn't necessarily work on the big screen.
50.0% Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
It's a gringos-go-home cautionary fright flick done in the spirit of a cheap '50s horror movie, except that it leaves you longing for the competence of grade-Z studio-system trash.
50.0% Metromix Matt Pais
When pretty flowers scream to imitate a cell phone ring tone it’s funny, not scary, so The Ruins doesn’t achieve squat as a horror movie.
50.0% Salt Lake Tribune Sean P. Means
There are three moods to The Ruins: Tension, revulsion and laughter. If the movie could have sustained more than one of these at a time, it might have had an interesting horror-show experience.
50.0% Slant Magazine Nick Schager
The Ruins has something going for it, but that something is not, unfortunately, sympathetic characters.
50.0% TV Guide Ken Fox
Undoes the book's sense of terrible inexorability and relegates a promising premise to just another bloody horror movie.
40.0% Eye Weekly (Toronto) Adam Nayman
Even genre-savvy viewers may not be prepared for the sheer gruesomeness.
40.0% Maxim Scott Jones
The flick moves at a good clip, and has the sense to end abruptly -- meaning you won't realize how little you enjoyed it until you're out in the parking lot.
40.0% Orlando Sentinel Roger Moore
The characters aren't well-developed; the structure doesn't present the viewer with false hope of rescue or a rising level of suspense or terror.
38.0% Boston Herald Tenley Woodman
Planning a tequila-drenched vacation in Mexico? Watch The Ruins for lessons in what not to do.
37.5% Hollywood.com Mark Burger
The lesson to be learned from this adaptation of Scott B. Smith’s best-selling novel seems to be: “Don’t trust the plants.” The lesson for potential moviegoers, however, might best be: “Stay at home.”
37.5% New York Post Kyle Smith
The movie is solely a series of gross-out episodes.
37.5% Toronto Star Philip Marchand
Cinema may last for another hundred years, but it is doubtful there will ever be a scene to rival the unintentionally funny amputation of a man's legs with a hunting knife and a bottle of Tequila.
20.0% Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
The Ruins is about as interesting as a pile of old stones and a monkey-dumb yanqui falling prey to the horrors of globalization. And that's pretty dumb.
0.0% Fresno Bee Rick Bentley
The Ruins has as much gore as your average horror film. The problem is that the execution of this violence is perverse, disgusting and an affront to such horror-film slayers as Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees.
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