The Ruins Blu-Ray Review

BLU-RAY REVIEW: The Ruins Unrated

07/06/08

There are many different places for people to go visit and party like, Egypt, Spain, or Greece. One popular place like no other is Mexico, it is the perfect destination for those in search of luxury, with its dazzling hotels and beaches, or culture with all of its wonderful history. It also has became the perfect escape place for young people to go wild and party, spring brake, summer, graduation, or any small sign of stress or boredom is a perfect excuse to go south the boarder go wild in search of fun or adventure. The Ruins attends to merge all this motives by telling us a horrible story about certain evil that has been guarded by the Mayas for centuries: A Killer Plant? The result a hard to believe story that managed to shock the audience not by the problem presented, but by the actions of the victims.

In the The Ruins a group of students get together in Mexico to celebrate their life to come, they spend much of their time in the beach, partying, getting drunk, and meeting new people, until they decide, in their last day, to go in search of what one of them called it “cultural time.” Along with a German guy they met the previous night, who is waiting for his brother’s return from an archeological dig, they agreed to go to an ancient undiscovered Mayan ruin deep within the jungle in search of the missing brother. As they arrived at the ruins exciting overtakes them all, until they realized something was wrong, the camp was empty, there was no sign of any excavation, and the locals Mayans became hostile toward them, making them stayed on grounds and forbidding them to leaved the premises. Now is up to them to figured out what is going on and how to survived.

After watching the preview, I could not help but wonder what this movie was about, now that I watched it I consider myself disappointed, it was not what I expected at all. I was expecting a nonstop bloodbath by a supernatural Mayan being or cruel bloodthirsty tribe, instead I found a tensioning environment where the victims also become the executioners, the story was interesting until I found out what the main villain is, after that it just becomes predictable and somehow silly, the characters were not well develop, and the resolution disappoints. Nonetheless the movie has some high points, it is well acted, all the young actors gave a great and credible performance, the location, settings and photography are beautiful, some of the special effects are excellent, specially the amputation scene which seem real and disturbing, the director does a great job in telling a poorly written story, and finally the tension it creates is great, this is more for the situations the characters face and the decisions they take, which the actor make it seem real and possible, than the real story by itself.

The DVD Conversion for the movie is really good, the sound and video looks amazing letting you appreciate more the beautiful settings where the story takes place. The Ruins is one of those movies that either you hate or love depending on what you look for in a horror movie. If the main object is to see unstoppable blood, and repulsing killing by a supernatural being or psycho, or to get scared by frightening storyline. This movie is not for you, on the other hand, if the idea is to watch a tensioning movie that takes advantage of human emotions like desperation, sadness, confusion and isolation and where the story or resolution are not as important this movie is right for you.

DreamWorks did a very nice job with the high definition Blu-ray disk. The only problem I found was that many of the night scenes didn't have as much clarity as one would expect from high definition. Otherwise the colors were vivid and and the clarity of the day scenes was near perfect. The TrueHD audio track was also very nicely done. The audio track really did the job of elevating the tension in the high drama scenes. The Blu-ray disk also features three features in High Definition: Making The Ruins, Creeping Death, and Building The Ruins.

Review By Milo
milo@smartcine.com

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VIDEO:
Widescreen

AUDIO:
Audio: 5.1 Dolby Digital, 5.1 Dolby TrueHD
Subtitles: English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The Unrated DVD comes with the alternate ending in it which is more appropriate than its theatrical one. special features wise, there is nothing special, the classic fillers Making of, Special Effects and casting featturetes. However, the deleted scenes feature have some interesting scenes that could have made it to the movie.

Making The Ruins: It is basically the making off featurette, it tells how the director was picked, the difference between the Script and the book, casting, and the locations where the movie was shot. (HD) (14:23)

Creeping Death: this is the special effects part. It goes from the designing of the vines to all the prosthetics used in the movie. (HD) (15:04)

Building the Ruins: this is shows how the different sets such as the pyramid, the shaft and the chamber were created. (HD)

Deleted Scenes: a total of five deleted scenes including a Alternate ending and the theatrical ending. Out of the five only the alternate ending and rain should have made it to the movie, the scenes could be seen with commentary by Carter Smith.(11:42)

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BLU-RAY REVIEW: The Ruins Unrated 07/06/08

BLU-RAY REVIEW: The Ruins Unrated

07/06/08