It is something of a cliché amongst fans of horror that the genre had its heyday in the 1970s and early 1980s, and has been utterly rotten ever since, "The Ruins" is a minimal exception. It's neither great nor terrible. But it definitely has it's moments.

Scott B. Smith adapts his own novel of tourism gone wrong with this horror film. In THE RUINS, a group of vacationers travel to a remote area in search of a missing man, but what they find there is far more disturbing and dangerous than they were prepared for.

And there you have it... just like in Eli Roth's masterpiece "Cabin Fever", the killer is not a man, or even a monster, but flesh-eating vines that can apparently imitate a cell phone ringing? So here the horror arises out of failings and foibles that are all too human, with the virus serving merely to expose a much deeper sickness in the principal players, (played nicely by Jena Malone and Jonathan Tucker) and in the end there is the grisly satisfaction of seeing everybody get no more or less than what they deserve.

In short, "The Ruins" is old-school horror, a form of unadulterated entertainment harking back to a decade when mutilation, murder and mad malevolence seemed somehow more innocent.

Recommended.

'THE RUINS' A Film by CARTER SMITH
Starring JONATHAN TUCKER - JENA MALONE - LAURA RAMSEY - SHAWN ASHMORE - JOE ANDERSON & SERGIO CALDERON
Screenplay & Novel Written by Scott B. Smith. Directed by Carter Smith.

[DISCUSS ON OUR FORUMS] [Review By John Gray]