| The Ruins (2008) - Movies | | Print | |
The Ruins (2008) - Movie
On vacation in Cancun, six friends go on an excursion to visit an
archaeological dig near Coba. Jeff, a type A guy who is set to begin
medical school in the fall with his girlfriend, Amy; Stacy, Amy's best
friend, an irresponsible and promiscuous aspiring social worker whose
nickname is "Spacy" along with her boyfriend, Eric, an immature high
school teacher; a fun-loving Greek guy nicknamed "Pablo," who lacks a
common language with any of the others; and Mathias, an intense,
thoughtful German tourist round out the cast of characters.
Mathias'
brother, Henrich, vanished shortly before the Americans and Greeks met
Mathias--he met a beautiful Dutch archaeologist and decided to meet her
at her dig, leaving a hastily drawn map for Mathias to follow in case
he wanted to join him. Jeff, Stacy, Amy, Eric, and Pablo decide to
accompany Mathias in his search for his brother, taking a bus to Coba
for the day. Pablo leaves a copy of the map at their hotel for his two
companions--who had gone to fish--to find, thinking that they may want
to join the group. Things immediately start to go wrong, as the group
isn't well prepared for the heat and insects, and the journey becomes
creepy. The poorly drawn map leads them to a Mayan village, where the
grievously poor inhabitants appear at first disinterested, and then
hostile to the foreigners. The Mayans try to force the vacationers to
leave the area. Unmoved by the villagers pleas, they find an
almost-hidden trail that they follow to the ruins.
Gun, rifle,
and bow-and-arrow wielding Mayan villagers then will not allow the kids
to leave. They are forced to climb a large hill covered in vines and
red flowers. The situation turns increasingly disturbing as they find
Henrich's corpse, covered in the vine and flowers. Further
investigation uncovers numerous other corpses covered in the plant, and
the plant, it turns out, secretes an acidic sap that burns them all
when it is crushed.
A ringing cell phone at the bottom of the
mine under the hill lures Pablo, but the rope breaks as he attempts to
retrieve it and he falls, breaking his back. Eric is injured slightly
trying to rescue him. Gradually, the group discovers that the vine is
sentient and carnivorous as it begins to lure them to their deaths, one
by one, perfectly mimicking the voices of others.
Jeff and
Mathias amputate Pablo's legs after the plant eats part of them. Amy is
the first to go, strangled by the plant while Jeff, angry at her for
being drunk, ignores her struggles, mistaking for strangled cries for
sickness. The plant enters Eric's wound and, though they remove the
bulk of it, Eric insists it's still inside him as he repeatedly cuts
himself in an effort to get it out.
Jeff is able to hold the
group together to a certain extent, always with new ideas about how to
conquer their challenges. But he is ultimately killed by the villagers'
arrows while trying to sneak past them. Air-headed and distressed
Stacy--who has held hope until the last that the other two Greeks will
arrive to save them--leaves Pablo unattended, and the plant kills and
eats him. Eric flays himself alive trying to remove the plant, which
has begun to take over his body again, and then accidentally kills
Mathias with his knife when Mathias attempts to stop him. With only
Eric and Stacy left, Eric begs her to kill him and put him out of his
misery, which she ultimately does. Then, she slashes her wrists on the
path at the base of the hill as a warning to others, but the plant
moves her away, just as it did other warning signs put up by other
victims.
The Mayans leave. Three days later, Pablo's two Greek
friends, with a few Brazilians, climb onto the hill to seek out their
traveling companion, bringing several others with them.
*THIS IS A SYNOPSIS OF THE BOOK..NOT THE MOVIE.*
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