Starring Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone, Laura Ramsey and Shawn Ashmore, The Ruins is based on Scott Smith’s best-selling novel about a group of college friends
whose leisurely Mexican vacation takes a turn for the worse when they
head off to explore an ancient, off-the-beaten-path Mayan temple,
and end up trapped in a terrifying situation when some evil vines (yes, you read right) put the clamps on them. With their escape sealed off by bow-and-arrow-toting locals who don’t want to let the contained, long-dormant evil spread further inland, fear and paranoia start to eat away at their sanity.

That set-up may sound ridiculous, admittedly, but within the genre-play parameters of its construction, The Ruins performs quite capably. Beautifully shot, the movie has several things going for it, most notably a committed, focused cast who deliver solid performances (Joe Anderson also co-stars as Mathias, a friendly, slightly mysterious fifth wheel who first talks up the Mayan ruins), and a script and set-up that allows for small fissures to come into play in interesting, believable ways. The main quartet are vacationing as two couples, but it’s the females who are good friends, which of course shades the relationship between the guys, and also figures into later bickering, competitive dissent between the ladies.

There’s also a bit of narrative edginess, in the form of an oral sex bet between one of the couples, and another late-night reach-around that points up the direct line between physical and psychological anxiety and sexual neediness — not something you’d typically expect in such, ahem, toss-off entertainment. A great sound design further benefits the film, and if one or two moments of slight hokiness still poke through, The Ruins for the most part succeeds in pitching itself as an exotically flavored case study in downward-spiral-to-base-impulse thrills — sort of like Cabin Fever by way of Turistas, though without quite the gore factor of either of those flicks.

Housed in a regular Amray case, the special unrated version of The Ruins is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with Dolby digital
5.1 surround audio tracks in English and French, and optional French and Spanish subtitles. Kicking off a nice slate of supplemental material is an audio commentary track with director Carter Smith and editor Jeff Betancourt, in which the pair talk about the issues cell phones present in modern moviemaking, the compression of time in the movie versus the novel, and in particular the laudatory work of production designer Grant Major. Betancourt acts as the goosing moderator throughout this chat, prompting Smith, and correcting him with regards to how much of the movie’s actual temple ruins were built on-site (two-thirds were constructed, with the final third being added via CGI). Both gentlemen are conspicuously silent, though, during the movie’s aforementioned handjob scene. Hmmm…

A 14-minute making-of featurette provides insight
into the transformation of Smith’s novel to the screen, and includes interviews with executive producers Ben Stiller and Chris Bender. The six-minute featurette “Building the Ruins” gives viewers a detailed look at the set and location for the film, with producer Stuart Cornfeld talking up the production design, and the aforementioned Major offering some interesting thoughts. Most interesting, though, might be a 15-minute featuerette on the process of bringing the movie’s deadly
vines to life, and the combination of practical special effects and (minimal) CGI that were used. Gary Cameron, the film’s “head vine maker,” walks the audience through the trial-and-error process of achieving the right look for the movie (they’re modeled after the pumpkin vine), and how each hand-crafted bloom and leaf was eventually narrowed down to one-fifth of a millimeter in thickness, to allow for the sort of translucence that really sells the look on screen. Finally, a collection of five deleted scenes with optional commentary by Smith and Betancourt runs around 12 minutes in total, and includes both a never-before-seen alternate ending and a slightly tweaked version of the theatrical conclusion. The movie’s theatrical trailer, and other previews for Drillbit Taylor, Sweeney Todd and Cloverfield are also included. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)