DVD Review: The Ruins Blu-Ray

Writer: Scott B. Smith
Director: Carter Smith
Cast: Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone, Laura Ramsey, Shawn Ashmore, Joe Anderson, Sergio Calderón
Rating: R (Unrated)
Studio: Dreamworks & Paramount
Release Date: July 8, 2008

Just because a movie is in the horror genre doesn’t mean that it has to be filled with gore, terrible horror clichés and a dumbed-down story. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I sat down to watch The Ruins. I’ve seen some pretty awful horror in my day. I was hoping for something that wouldn’t make me feel as though I wasted my time watching this film. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that The Ruins was much better than I anticipated.

I believe that this movie has succeeded largely due to the amount of tension that was ever present thanks to good writing and a talented cast. I actually recognized most of the main characters in The Ruins. That’s rare for the majority horror films. It seems that many directors feel that horror can be carried on the story alone and they can sacrifice when it comes to finding quality actors. Unknowns may be cheaper, but they’re also going to affect the quality of a film. The Ruins didn’t seem to suffer from this problem.

Release Information:
The Ruins made its debut in U.S. theaters on April 4, 2008. While it debuted at #5 at the box office, netting $8 million during its opening weekend, the film didn’t stay in the top ten very long. I feel the movie was affected by less advertising than you’d expect for a horror movie that has the potential to make some cash. The Ruins has received mixed reviews from critics. It seems that critics either love it or hate it. I believe critics fall into three categories when it comes horror; those who like senseless gore with very little story behind it, those who like something more (gore or not) in the stories behind the horror they watch and those who just aren’t fond of horror period. This may affect the reviews for this movie merely because The Ruins is horror, but it is not dependent on mindless gore.

Paramount and Dreamworks have teamed up to release multiple versions of The Ruins on DVD. All of the various releases are available as of July 8, 2008. The movie should be available at a series of retailers both online and offline. At Amazon, there is an Unrated DVD version available for $20.99. There is the original version released in theaters for $23.99. There is also a Blu-Ray Version of The Ruins for $27.95. This review is for the Blu-Ray version.

The The Ruins Plot
If you’re a horror fan then you already know that you should never, ever go to any location “to explore” that isn’t on the tour or map. That means no caves and most definitely no unexplored ruins. I guess the group of friends that make up the lead characters of The Ruins never received that memo, because rather than exploring the public ruins with a friendly and helpful tour guide, they had to visit unexplored ruins with their new, foreign friend.

This friend wants to go find his brother, who never returned to the hotel after visiting the ruins the previous day. Assuming his brother got wrapped up in romance with the beautiful archaeologist who took him to her dig site at the ruins, the German, Mathias (Joe Anderson, Across the Universe) thinks he’ll be heading to a newly discovered set of ruins with his new friends. Of course, what the ruins offer much more than historical value, which the five will soon find out.

Mathias’ new friends are two college-aged couples. The first couple is med student, Jeff McIntire (Jonathan Tucker, In the Valley of Elah) and his wild, party-girl of a girlfriend, Amy (Jena Malone, Into the Wild). The second couple is Amy’s best friend, Stacy (Laura Ramsey, Lords of Dogtown) and her boyfriend, Eric (Shawn Ashmore, X-Men, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand). After meeting Mathias at the hotel swimming pool, the four decide to go to the ruins since its going to be their last day in Mexico before heading home.

After a wild night of partying (especially for Amy – who flirts with Mathias after Jeff goes to bed), Jeff has to convince Amy to go to the ruins. Eric gets a reward from Stacy since she lost a bet concerning Amy’s faithfulness to Jeff. Of course, he doesn’t have time to cash in on the reward until much later in the film. They have to head to the ruins and Jeff has convinced Amy she needs to go, even if she is hungover.

After managing to secure someone to drive them to the ruins (it wasn’t easy), the four head through seemingly deserted paths. Along the way they end up seeing natives (Mayans) they believe must live in a nearby village. When they head to the ruins, which look absolutely beautiful, they’re soon followed by a group of Mayans with weapons. Unable to understand their language, the group moves up the steps of the ruins as the Mayans stand guard, unwilling to let them leave.

At the top, they find evidence Matthias’ brother was camping along the top of the ruins, but some deadly and mysterious things are going on that spook the group. After both Matthias and Stacy are injured, weird things start happening. Unable to leave the ruins without the risk of the Mayans killing them, the group of five can do nothing but wait for help that might never come.

Despite some minor annoyances with the way the drunk Amy was portrayed one of the strongest elements of this film was the actors. They were believable in their roles. This is a group of talented young actors. These actors are not from your standard horror film. You won’t have to try and ignore cruddy acting (like in many, especially independent horror flicks) in this movie. That’s because these actors are all semi-well known with extensive resumes. I liked this more than anything merely because I find it incredibly annoying to watch any movie and be distracted by poor, uncommitted actors.

Overall, this film was psychologically tense. Sure, there were certain elements of gore that were quite creepy, but I think it was more the reasoning behind the gore that made it so frightening. This movie isn’t jump around the corner scary. Its a realistic type of fear and that is why audiences can relate to these characters and their plight. If there was a chance to explore these types of ruins and if these evil forces did exist, how would you react? That’s a valid question posed by this film.

Storyline/Plot:
Replayability:
Acting:
Directing:

Audio/Visual:
The VC-1 encoded widescreen transfer for The Ruins Blu-Ray is presented at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The image looks amazing. You can’t beat the quality. It far surpasses that of a standard DVD. The colors are vibrant, contrast is sharp, and everything looks excellent. It’s like you have your own private movie screen in your house and the film plays out with no errors, no flaws, and a perfect, realistic color palette. It couldn’t get any better than if you’d been on set, filming with the crew.

The audio quality leaves something to be desired when it comes to Blu-Ray. That doesn’t mean the audio is bad. It just means it is not quite up to snuff when it comes to a Blu-Ray release. Presented in English Dolby Digital HD 5.1, there could have been so much more done with this soundtrack. Everything sounds good. The sound is clear and there is no need for volume toggling. Still, for a Blu-Ray soundtrack it just wasn’t all that dynamic. There are subtitles included on The Ruins Blu-Ray. These subtitles are in English, French Spanish and Portuguese.

Visual:
Audio:

Bonus Features:
There are plenty of bonus features included on The Ruins Blu-Ray disc. The first is a commentary. This commentary features the director of the film, Carter Smith and the film’s editor, Jeff Betancourt. Since this is Carter’s first film, Jeff aptly steps into the role of interviewer. In this Q & A interrogation, Carter and Jeff explore the film from conception to completion with plenty of juicy tidbits, reflections and an overly satisfying commentary on The Ruins. There is also commentary on a selection of deleted scenes. This is also with Carter and Jeff. There are five deleted scenes in total with a total time of just fewer than 12 minutes.

You have your standard “Making Of” featurette. I honestly believe every movie that is halfway decent should include a making of feature on its DVD release. This contains a look at the movie from both the cast and crew perspectives and runs just shy of 15 minutes in length. In six minutes, you’ll learn how the set designers built the ruins set, in the featurette, “Building the Ruins”. Finally, in “Creeping Death”, you’ll spend 15 or so minutes learning about the props and the realistic effects used to create gore, death and destruction (realistically) in this movie.

Though not really my idea of a bonus there is The Ruins original theatrical trailer, which caps off the bonus section. Ultimately, this is an in depth, nice set of bonuses. For a Blu-Ray, I would expect more than what the standard edition offers, but this DVD doesn’t seem to have much more than standard offerings. You’ll have to decide if going for the Blu-Ray is worth it when both have virtually all the same bonuses.

Bonus Features:

Bottom Line:
The Ruins was much better than I expected for a horror movie. I didn’t find it to be overly predictable (though some moments were) and the constant tension made this a movie that is hard to stop watching. I’mjust not sure if going Blu-Ray is the way to go (you can get nearly all the same supplements in the Unrated DVD for less moolah), especially considering the audio quality isn’t as great as some of the other Blu-Ray movies I’ve purchased. While this isn’t a bad investment, if you don’t have a lot of money to spend, the standard Unrated version works out great. If you get this, get this for the amazingly flawless video quality. Either way, this film is worth checking out.

Overall Rating:

Technorati Tags: The Ruins, Blu-Ray, DVD Review, Horror, Mexico, Jena Malone, Paramount> Jonathan Tucker, Laura Ramsey, Shawn Ashmore, Mayan Ruins, Death

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Written by Shayne - Visit Website
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I am the proud Papa of a son, Dylan Michael Keller. Other than spending time with my son, I have two main obsessions in life; video games & movies. Often, the two accompany time spent with Dylan. I've been married to Andrea for 13 years this December. One thing I've learned about married life is to always expect the unexpected. After nearly eleven years with just the three of us, and our Golden Retriever, Braeden, I've just found out I'm going to be a dad again. In my professional life, I'm a bit of a cyber geek. I enjoy D&D, writing stories, role-playing, computer games, working on websites, and just hanging out. I work for a computer firm doing computer-tech type work and that's all I can really say about my job. In my fantasy life, I escape to the world of film. I'm not ashamed to admit that I've seen The Return of the King at least 37 times. I signed up to review movies, and you can guarantee I'll do the job right. I hope you enjoy my reviews and always remember kids...Make Love, Not Warcraft.