The Ruins: Where's the protest?

The Ruins: Where's the protest?

by Rajkhet Dirzhud-Rashid - SGN A&E Writer The Ruins Now playing First off, let's just have it said: The Ruins sucks on all levels, in every way and then some. That being said, it's important, I think, to note that this film is part of what seems to be a growing and very disturbing trend - or actually a couple of trends, in Hollywood. That of the softcore "snuff film" being marketed as horror, because make no mistake, that's what films like this really are at their core, and films depicting the torture of women and indigenous people, often linking the two in a wretched marriage of exploitation. Both trends make me sick to my gut and madder than hell, and make me wish there were the kind of women with balls who protested films like Dressed to Kill and Basic Instinct for the anti-female films they were and are. Ah, for the good old days. What I especially disliked about The Ruins, however, is how yet another privileged set of young, white tourists are set up to be both victims and victimizers - hey, is it really an accident that the bratty white chick gets to "act out," and that her mouthing off gets two people of color killed, including a child? This trend of offing people of color seems something Hollywood is doing a lot of here lately. Can we say desensitizing America to the plight of people of color in countries overseas, like, say, Iraq? Yeah, you get the picture. Also, the whole making women look like all they can do is stand around waiting to be killed really boils my grits. Isn't there enough goddamned violence against women in the world anyway? Okay, off the soapbox and on to the review of the film, which is truly, truly bad, believe me. Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone (the most irritating of the four and oddly enough the one to survive, even after her antics get an innocent child killed), Shawn Ashmore (likeable, but stuck in a bad film, poor guy), and Laura Anderson all take off on this trip to some mysterious ruins for "an adventure." They are led by a stranger they meet on the beach and party with, who happens to be looking for his brother in these same ruins, which are off the beaten path in the deep jungles of Mexico (wishful longing for "those savage days" by the filmmakers, no doubt). Things immediately go wrong, with one poor guy getting shot in the head (be warned, this is a very graphic film) after he tries to appease a bunch of supposed "Mayans" who show up out of nowhere and object to "little Miss Bratty" taking photos of everything in sight. Thus the group ends up scrambling up the ruined "ruins" of a pyramid and being trapped, as the "Mayans" stand guard below with guns (and the above-mentioned dead guy) as proof of why no one should try to leave. More bad things happen, and there's tons and tons of gore and unnecessary violence, particularly to one of the women, who completely loses her mind, and by the end of The Ruins, both myself and my date for the evening were feeling like we hated the characters, and hated even more that we'd trucked ourselves out for a late-night screening on a rainy night. So, should you even rent the video when it comes out, probably soon? Well, do you like watching people get shot in the head, do you like watching women cut off hunks of their flesh, or children get shot? If not, then no, leave this one for the carrion birds.