The Ruins is one of them horror films that brings together a collection of american college kids one of the classic cliches of back end 70's onward horror, always intent on upping the body count for the early 20 year olds in the horror genre, this time the college kids are on holiday and decide to on their last day to go and check out an ancient Mayan temple(as you do!) but as they get there they are warned badly with a misunderstanding of languages between some of the locals who are obviously protecting the temple and so the college kids are forced onto the roof of the temple, because they think that the locals are out to kill them.

As the movie progresses you soon find out that the college kids should have learnt to speak the locals language, particularly as they're on holiday because it would have saved all the deaths that follow, but since this is a horror movie and the main characters are allowed to be stupid and not think for themselves we shall carry on.

It turns out that evil surrounds the Mayan temple with evil talking plants that eat people, with the little red flowers doing the talking or rather echoing the characters voices now and again for some strange reason, even a mobile phone can be heard from the flowers too which is a neat trick.

Of course there are a few pointless bits of the film, but I won't mention them as the story does build some sort of tension along the way with the plant vines getting under the skin and a good few classic gory moments when some of the survivors have to break this german guys legs and then cut them off to stop the vine thing spreading and all that infection stuff that most horror films like now.

The ending wasn't a total loss, someone survived, so Hoooray! but after the film ended there wasn't much to the film to really think yeah this was worth watching, it just seemed like another run of the mill horror film that missed the point somewhere in the middle, it would have been great if they threw something else into the mix, why not a few zombies running inside the Temple, that would have been better!

I did like the film however, just not as good as others I have seen like Splinter, although it had a sense of doom and gloom right in the middle to the last act, but the end gave a double barrelled chink of light and the flip side of "oh no" now they're screwed!

One to watch whilst your brain is resting I suppose.