And I didn't even know they were making this! Scott Smith has once again adapted his own novel for the screen (as in A SIMPLE PLAN). It looked creepy, and the film doesn't seem to shy away from some of the more fantastic elements of the movie's menace.

Here go.

Thanks muchly!

Just finished reading the book so thanks a bunch for the trailer link... this movie adaptation should be interesting to watch. The book was, IMO, pretty grisly, disturbing and grim, so I wonder how they are going to handle all the gore. Lotsa icky stuff in there...

I betcha they change that craaaaazy ending, though... sheesh...

I tried to read the book a couple of times, but just gave up within a few chapters... the damn thing read like one very long treatment. Sparse dialogue, lots of description. Almost like going back and trying to reread HP Lovecraft, in a way.

I don't have the patience for that, anymore.

I have to admit to being seriously underwhelmed with THE RUINS. While it's not a disaster of Thomas Harris proportions, I can't help thinking that after all this time, Smith could have come up with a story with some sort of moral complexity.

Then again, I thought that he missed the point of his own novel with his screenplay for A SIMPLE PLAN. It'll be hard to do that again.

I gave up the first time I started, too. I read around 100 pages, then gave it up. I got the unabridged audiobook from Audible.com and decided I should just let it go while taking a long trip. I restarted from the beginning and listened to it.

Once I got past the first 100 pages or so again, though, I realized the book gets much better.

At this point, I'll just wait for the movie. That way, I'll have pretty much no idea what I'm in for (well, aside from what the trailer may have given away).

I just started reading this. In the early going, it's hard not to hear the prose being read by the narrator in THE CREEPING TERROR. ;)

I picture two German guys yelling, shoving and punching one another while a detached male voice intones, "Mathias called his brother a fool."

I've read it, more than once. Flawed, but unpleasant fun!

Just under 10 hours until THE RUINS.

Color me excited for this. I really want this one to be good. Between this and THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, I'm hoping to get two, decent, old school Barkeresque horror flicks this year.

Pity that I haven't seen much promotion.

And an even bigger pity that everyone who has seen the trailer, but is unfamiliar with the book has dismissed it as looking "stupid."

Maybe Scott Smith should have thrown in a ghostly little child to liven things up.

Nah. All cynicism aside, I can't wait for this one.

A ghostly WET little child, with long black hair, and lots of shadow under her eyes. I'm stoked, too.

So, I just got back from watching THE RUINS and, well, I can say that at least the "essence" of the book is still intact.

OBVIOUS SPOILERS AHEAD...

Lots and lots of changes from book to big screen... the first 100 pages of the book seem condensed into the movies first 15 minutes and some memorable things that I liked about the book are completely gone. And this is my biggest complaint about the movie version of THE RUINS. There are things in the book that have a certain amount of explanation and setup that are either completely glossed over (the other brother character is not even in the movie really), happen on screen way too quickly (the "you're f*cking him" scene comes immediately to mind), or great sequences that are just eliminated altogether (the mayan village), I assume, in the interest of pacing. The book was pretty darn perfect and the movie doesn't even come close.

I'm happy to report, however, that the grisly nature of some of the book's key nasty sequences is intact and surprisingly disgusting. The audience I saw it with seem disgusted and repulsed in all the right places and I was surprised at the amount of gore in this thing. I heard a person sitting a few seats away from me totally wince during a particular nasty scene and he said "I don't think I can sit through this." and hid his eyes until the scene was over. That made me chuckle, because that scene DID make the entire audience freak out.

Unfortunately, as I suspected would happen, the entire book ending is gone and replaced with... well... how shall I put this... the most shiteous ending ever (if you've read the book, be prepared to slap your head in amazement). Everything in the latter half of the movie has been rewritten... not ever so slightly condensed for cinema... I mean RE-WRITTEN COMPLETELY. The fates of the characters are not the same at all, some character motivations and actions are completely switched around, which I absolutely do not understand. Surprising? Yes. Annoying? Yes... but still a satisfying movie-going experience.

The movie was good, but the book is so much better (but, isn't that usually the case). Clocking in at barely 90 minutes, THE RUINS could've USED an extra half hour and put back in some of the things they left out from the book.

It's not nearly as bad as I was fearing.

And yet not even remotely as good as it should have been.

The first 10 minutes are so atrocious that they would have been better off deleted. On another board, someone said that all the first 10 minutes needed was something like the diner scene in DEATH PROOF to establish the characters before sending them on their merry way. Man, is it really so hard to do what Tarantino does? Or even Eli Roth come to that? Imagine how much better this film would have been in his hands. The opening of THE RUINS has so much shrill chaos standing in for character development that I was starting to get a little bit angry with it.

But, hey!! Stick with it, horror fans! Once our intrepid party of idiots reaches the titular ruins, all hell breaks loose in a satisfyingly nasty manner. This is easily one of the most brutal and gory R-rated films I've ever seen that doesn't involve Christ.

Sure, character traits are switched around for no good reason, but it's all for the sake of economy, I guess. Unfortunately, one bit of character mash-up (no pun intended) robs the film of one of my favorite relationships in the book: Jeff and Mathias.

Hell, where ARE the characters from the book? I guess that for such a straight-faced thriller, Smith originally wrote these characters as far too quirky for a quickie major studio horror flick that didn't have an auteur like Tarantino or Roth at the helm.

While there's enough here to carry us through, THE RUINS too often feels like a Platinum Dunes remake of a much better film.

I do recommend it as a better than average R-rated shocker, but do yourself a favor and read the novel.

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P.S.--The film gets extra points for the casting and usage of Mr. Jonathan Tucker who occasionally resembles a young, EVIL DEAD-era Bruce Campbell. His acting is occasionally a bit much (especially one reaction shot on the first morning of their ordeal), but he's still better than Bruce was back in the day. And he's pretty good for the most part.

As Scott Smith is the IMDb-credited screenwriter I assume (assume) he made his own changes. Has THE RUINS been press-screened?

No! It wasn't.

I doubt I will ever read the book, so any chance you could break down the differences between novel and film for us, Don? Thanks.

That would probably call for a seperate RUINS spoiler thread.

I know I was a bit put off the first time I saw A SIMPLE PLAN becauseof the way Smith, adapting his own novel, had cut the last quarter of the book, which features an almost comically grotesque and bloody sequence set in a liquor store.

But then I applied what I'd learned in screenplay workshop, and I saw why the role of Jacob had been enlarged and the plot telescoped, and now I love the film.

I started getting nervous about the movie of A SIMPLE PLAN when I saw the poster tagline - 'Sometimes good people do evil things'. This is almost exactly the opposite of the book's theme. And the changes of the last third of the story only muddy the waters further, without wanting to spoil the ending of either.

Most of all though, the book's big finish gave Raimi the perfect chance to combine his new 'mature attitude' with some old-style demented Raimi splatter. And he (along with Smith) bottled it.

Is it too late for re-shoots?

Looks like THE RUINS is facing quick extinction at the boxoffice, but I still may see it. It does seem like a chance at pedigreed, "prestige" horror was blown, given Smith's rep and good reviews for the book.

Oh, I don't know. It looks like it's currently at #4 on its way to a $3 - $4 million weekend. No, it didn't set the world on fire, but given that I've understood the budget to be around $8 million, it looks like it will recoup in much the same way as THE MIST did. At the very least this should get us an "unrated dvd" with "ALTERNATE ENDING TOO SHOCKING FOR THEATERS, OMG!!!"

I read a spoilerish review on IMDB a month or two ago and if it's to be believed, it was test screened with an ending that differs from both, the book and the current theatrical cut. I'm going to guess that this ending exists, because the abrupt nature of the theatrical cut's ending suggests that something was clipped off.

I'm still torn on this movie and intended to catch it again tonight with a midnight crowd since this film gets some good audience reactions once we get into the meat of the action. Unfortunately, i crashed my car yesterday so I'm either taking a cab or sitting home. :angry:

For the record, it wasn't a serious accident, but bad enough to keep me on foot and public transportation for a week.

On the bright side, the weather is nice for walking and there are art house theaters within walking distance. I wonder if someone is trying to tell me something about putting all of my moviegoing energies into repeatedly watching the Studio Horror Flick of the Week.

Glad to hear you are okay Tom! But maybe the Movie Gods are trying to send you a sign? :)

I thought the thing was a chore to sit through. Like I said in an earlier thread, I gave up on the book three or four chapters in, so I don't know what changes where made. But I could sure tell where some cases where character traits were being shifted around willy-nilly.

At one moment, damn near everyone in the audience let loose with some variation of, "Hey, where'd she get them balls?"

But this just came across as a horror film made by folks that think the fans want it dumb, with unlikable characters that you're eager to see get it and heavy on the thinly-veiled torture porn when they do.

Sort of like Cabin Fever with all deliberate attempts at humor cut out.

Sure, they got a few writhe-in-the-seat moments out of it, but for the audience I was with it was mostly Play MSTie For Me.

Sadly, I don't entirely disagree with most of this statement, but I'm not so sure about the "torture porn" thing.

*MAJOR (implied) SPOILERS to follow for book and movie*
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Looking back at the film, Dimitri/Pablo, Eric and Jeff all get off rather light. On the other hand, Mathias and suffer the tortures of the damned, but there's a twist in both cases. Had the film fleshed out the psychological torment a bit more (which, okay, would have taken the film further into torture porn), Stacey's climax would have had a bit more heft and context. Mm, I guess I can see the torture porn aspect here, but the twist is that one guy is tortured while another is trying to save his life and the tortured woman does all the work herself. It's almost like we're SEEING the type of thing that David Fincher and Andrew Kevin Walker had the good taste to merely imply in SEVEN.

Be that as it may, the aforementioned characters get off light in the film. Especially when you think of full arc for Jeff and Amy in the novel.

I still feel that THE RUINS subverts the recent torture porn trend while, ya know also rolling around in it a little. Where's Frank Darabont when you need him. THE RUINS really needed to be an overlong, overwrought, overly depressing horror epic. With flashbacks!! Use the inner life of the characters to briefly flash back to better times. If he had done that, he wouldn't have needed nearly as much of the material prior to arriving at the ruins.

Dang it! I wanted this thing to be THE MIST with banter out of DEATH PROOF!! Gah! *snap* I have a radical new idea! I think that THE RUINS is ripe for a remake. Give me the book, a pencil and a highlighter and I will give you an adaptation that wipes the floor with this one credited to the novelist!

You know what's especially galling about THE RUINS? By swapping around character traits and arcs, I can't even really fill in the gaps. Mathias is now Pablo/Dimitri!! Amy is now Stacey!! Stacey is now Eric!! And Eric? Well, who the hell is he now? It's almost as if Scott Smith was deliberately trying to sabotage the film for people who wanted it to be a visualization of the novel (either that or he was using the opportunity to play some "what if" rewrite games with himself).

Sometimes, you can see a movie adaptation which acts as a serious abridgement of a source novel and use your knowledge of the text to fill in what the movie doesn't show thus making it seem better than it is. I can think of a certain boy wizard franchise that gets away with murder on that score. But you can't even do that with THE RUINS, because the logic of switching the characters around is simply not obvious or accessible to me. I guess I'm going to have to hope that the Smiths both sit down for a dvd commentary to explain themselves.

Just you wait. It will be a plain, vanilla dvd release with a disclaimer, "Carter and Scott Smith believe that their work speaks for itself, but please feel free to enjoy the 12 minute EPK featurette thoughfully provided by Paramount and Dreamworks."

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Which scene was that? Amy chucking a handful of vine at the Mayans? I remember wishing for that to happen while reading the novel.


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Looks like this thing did a projected $7.8 million at the box-office this weekend. Again, I remember reading (forgetting the source) that the budget was around $8 million. So, it's actually a success.

Given my disappointment, I'm not sure what I wanted this film's box-office to prove. Maybe I was hoping for it to vindicate the novel? Perhaps I'm hoping that Ben Stiller gets Dreamworks to reach into its pocket for a string of made-for-dvd reshoots and we'll get THE RUINS 1.5 on dvd.

Sadly, what this really means is that we'll get a DTV sequel:

THE RUINS 2: VINES GONE WILD

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P.S.: Thanks, William. Fortunately, it's more of an inconvenience and a pricey life lesson thus far. ;)

The point in the bowels of the temple where the up-until-then mewling brunette grabs the relatively more ballsy blonde's hand and says, "C'mon!"

And when the scene is done goes back to mewling.

****SPOILERS*********

I've only read the book, but not yet seen the movie - in the novel, why didn't they try to torch the vine? Did I overlook something?

The vine doesn't like fire (it scambles away from it during one of the descents into the mine)... the group has the ability to start fires... I gotta be missing something here.

Yeah, I was wondering why when the locals were off getting more ammo for their guns and whatnot, they just didn't pick up some Roundup while they were at it.

*SPOILERS to follow, of course*
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I wondered that exact same thing myself. At the very least, I wondered why Jeff didn't try to see just how flammable the vine was. Given the situation, one would be tempted to start conducting harsh experiments on little vine samples.

The reality, I guess, is that the vine always has the upper hand on them (what a statement). As far as the flammability, I'm going to guess that the vine is always moist and probably wouldn't burn well. Furthermore, it simply wouldn't allow them to get very far. Once it's clear to the reader and the characters just how mobile the damn thing is, it makes no secret of how intelligent and thoroughly clever it is. It's a menace that has made a sadistic art form out of trapping its prey and even the best of our characters are simply not the equal to it.

As far as the Mayans go, there was never a moment where they weren't completely organized against an escape attempt. In the novel, Jeff walks the perimeter of the ruin (probably more than once) looking for weak spots in their ranks. He not only realizes that there isn't one, but notices that more and more Mayans seem to keep coming and that they're watching in shifts.

Throughout the novel, Jeff and Mathias take turns at the base of the ruin, allegedly watching for the Greeks but also keeping their eyes on the Mayans. Given the organization of the Mayans and their relative sense of boredom, Jeff and Mathias realize that this routine is something that they've become used to. Much like the vine itself, the Mayans have learned to be efficient about it.

Like everything else, these plot points are not very well established in the film.

Nor is the fact that the vine's sap is acidic. From tearing it up with their hands to simply brushing the little tendrils off of their clothes, it burns their hands. By the end of the novel, you sense that their hands are in pretty bad shape from constant sap burns, but they've simply become used to the pain by that point.

Why the movie didn't take the sensational opportunity to establish that the vine had ALIEN-like "acid for blood" thus also establishing why they couldn't simply tear it up is beyond me.
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.*SPOILERS above*

SPOILERS...



I thought about this very aspect of the novel that was missing from the movie and there's (probably) a good explanation as to why this was removed. If my memory isn't failing, weren't the characters all pretty much naked and barely-dressed in shredding clothes by the end of the novel because of this? I seem to recall some wording in the novel about how the were observing each other almost naked because they no longer had clothes.

I'd imagine having the actors running around naked by the end of the movie would've been much more pleasing, but the MPAA would've had a heyday.

Will the alternate ending have something to do with a dead child and a birthday cake?

*bump*

I have The Onion AV Club to thank for giving me an excuse to bump a thread about a movie which made zero impact and was ushered out of theaters in less than a month.

http://www.avclub.com/content/blog/book_vs_film_the_ruins

To be fair to the excellent Tasha Robinson, I think she does a pretty good job of putting the final nail in this film's coffin. Needless to say, this piece is completely and totally spoilerish for the film and the novel.

The talkback column is particularly good with the deleted ending from the test screenings being touched upon.

Great site! Thanks for the link.

(I still recommend the graphic novel of LEGEND!)