Fright Flashback: Vacations Gone Awry

Welcome back to Fright Flashback, where every week until the end of summer we will visit an older horror film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to an upcoming new release. This week we are anticipating Jurassic World, in which a dino-themed amusement park experiences yet another deadly malfunction. In celebration, we'll be revisiting The Ruins, which depicts death and carnage on an idyllic Mexican vacation.

Year: 2008

Director: Carter Smith

Cast: Shawn Ashmore, Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Ratng: R

The Ruins is my favorite book. It's a bleak, unforgiving horror novel populated with likable, believable, three-dimensional characters who it puts through the freaking wringer. I try to read it every summer and every time I question why I do this to myself. That's why I love The Ruins. It's a delicately-paced horror story that pushes its characters to the breaking point, a transfixing campfire yarn that chills you to the marrow.

The Ruins is not my favorite movie. Although the screenplay was written by Scott Smith (who also wrote the novel) and it stars my perennial favorite Shawn Ashmore, it transforms a pitch black humanistic terror tale into a generic post-Saw gory vacation flick à la Wrong Turn or Rest Stop.

Luckily, I still like generic gory horror starring Shawn Ashmore, but it's just not the same experience as reading the book, which is like being tethered to a wild boar wearing a coat made of electric eels. So. If you haven't read the book and especially if you know nothing about it, I urge you to ignore the rest of this review and pick up a copy. Don't read a synopsis. Don't even look at your Netflix queue until you're finished. Experience the magic of having your endocrine system ripped out by a paperback. Then you can feel free to watch this movie and/or finish this review.

Welcome back! And I'm sorry.

The Ruins tells the story of a group of college graduates ready for one last adventure before their lives spread them apart. Emphasis on last. Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) is a self-righteous young man, an eagle scout type pre-med student who is bored with lounging by the pool; Amy (Jena Malone) is his girlfriend, a wet blanket piece of work whose favorite activity is complaining and/or attempting to make out with other dudes - she's real fun, this one; Stacy (Laura Ramsey) is her best friend, a smart, capable girl; Eric (Shawn Ashmore), Stacy's boyfriend, is more the fratty type but he's smart and confident, a good match for Stacy.

At their beach resort hotel, they meet a beleaguered German tourist named Mathias (Joe Anderson). His brother Henrich went off to meet a hot archaeologist at a dig site in the jungle and hasn't returned. Dun dun DUN! Along with their Greek friend Dimitri (Dimitri Baveas), they agree to head out to the site and see if they can find Henrich. When they arrive, they find a massive flat pyramid with a mine shaft at the top. It's completely empty, but the second they set foot on the rock, the nearby Mayan forces arrive and threaten them, forcing them up the hill and shooting Dimitri when he tries to leave.

Knowing they're trapped, the friends settle in and ration their provisions, waiting until Dimitri's friends come looking for them or they can come up with a plan of escape. However, a malevolent force on the ruin doesn't want them to leave. [SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT, PEOPLE IN THE DARK PLEASE GO HOME IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU] The vines covering the pyramid are sentient and very hungry. They can imitate human speech, dissolve flesh with their acidic sap, and are generally cleverer than you expect your garden variety weed to be.

This sounds dumb. Believe me, I know. But stick with me here.

Do it for the vine.

True, the vines are certainly more showy than in the book, which renders them a terrifying, unknowable menace, but if we were to list every aspect of the film at which the book is superior, we would be here   until Scott Smith releases another book*. So yes, the vines in this incarnation of the story reveal their true nature far too soon, and are a little too active to be insidious and creepy, occupying the spotlight instead of the festering shadows.

*That joke is funny, because Scott Smith has only written four things in his life. Two novels (A Simple Plan in 1993, The Ruins in 2006) and the screenplay adaptations for both those novels. God, I'm clever.

But! Through a heady concoction of seamless special effects work and a truly stunning bit of audio design which layers the rustling of the vines into an indelibly unnerving soundscape, the vines are nevertheless believable as a real menace instead of yet another cheesy horror movie villain attempting to push the envelope but cutting themselves on the flap.

This decently impressive work on the vines in spite of a script too overeager to show them off somewhat balances out the deficiencies of the paper thin characters. Moment by moment ticks by, leaning on the book far too heavily for any suitable emotional substance. It's almost like watching a Cliff's Notes version of the book, peppered with wooden, obvious dialogue and brutal narrative shortcuts.

Amy has not yet learned to lower her expectations when watching modern horror movies.

Unfortunateiy, the acting is about on the same rough-hewn level of the character work. Jonathan Tucker has always had trouble with his enunciation, and his speech - which sounds like he forgot to take out his retainer in the morning - becomes a liability as the stakes get higher. When he gets flustered he sounds rather like Daffy Duck instead of a large and in charge wilderness man. 

Malone and Ramsey are likewise on and off, though Malone more so. The only unmarred performer is Ashmore, who isn't exactly dazzling, but turns in a committed performances that holds the rest of the ensemble together like glue. Or rather, something adhesive but not quite that strong. He holds them together like high grade molasses.

But these flaws are no worse than the majority of contemporary horror, and it is with great pleasure that I can say that The Ruins is still a largely enjoyable experience. There are several downright pretty shots (especially when the cinematographer gets it in his mind to do something with the vast expanse of bright blue sky the setting has afforded), the characters are shallow but they get the job done, there is a heavy focus on shirtless men (which I can appreciate for gender equality reasons as well as... personal ones), and the gore is terrific and hard to watch. 

I see this as a badge of honor, considering that The Ruins came out the same year as Saw IV. It's not quite fun, but as a gory adventure flick for the bloodthirsty Saw crowd, it certainly avoids most of the grimness and despair that that implies. It's not a flick I'd jump to throw on at parties, but in the future I can see myself re-approaching The Ruins without an ounce of regret and some measure of enjoyment. Come on. This was 2008. That's Oscar-worthy praise right there.

TL;DR: The Ruins is a feeble literary adaptation, but a pretty decent post-Saw gore flick.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1238

Come Back To Texas

Year: 2003

Director: Marcus Nispel

Cast: Jessica Biel, Jonathan Tucker, Andrew Bryniarski

Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

In the past decade, the horror community has been inundated with remake after remake after remake. These types of films have always been around, even in the 50's and 60's and back, but since the mid-2000's there has been an overwhelming glut of the tepid things. Just on this blog, I've covered a small army of them including Carrie,  Evil Dead, Fright Night, The Last House on the Left, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Prom Night, and The Wizard of Gore, and there's easily ten times that amount on the market today.

With most cinematic movements, it's hard to tamp down a true ignition point. There tends to be several films around the same time that coalesce into the beginning of a new wave of filmmaking, like how the proto-slashers The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Black Christmas came out within weeks of one another in 1974. Luckily for us, the remake boom has one clear culprit.

In 2003, Michael Bay's new production company Platinum Dunes released their first of many many many low budget remakes - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As if you couldn't have guessed that already. 

I really shouldn't bury the lede in reviews where I stick the poster on the top.

The film was such a sterling success that other studios immediately hopped on the bandwagon and began pumping out updates on their long dormant horror franchises, prominent and obscure alike (and if anybody has any insider information on how the hell Mother's Day got remade, please contact me immediately). What most of them seemed to miss was the fact that Texas Chainsaw was actually pretty good.

But we're not here to talk about the tsunami of crappy remakes. We're here to discuss their pretty good progenitor and the influence it has - for better or for worse - over the narrative and aesthetic stylings of the ensuing decade.

The first of these is immediately apparent. Though the characters in this film have no obvious analogue with the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, they are exponentially more attractive. In fact, if we view beauty as the equation x=log2(3^10) with x being the proportional attractiveness of the current cast over the classic cast, the results would be math.

Sexy, sexy math.

Our Meat for the evening, and by any definition, the film doesn't view them as more than that, are Morgan (Jonathan Tucker, also from The Ruins), a sexy nerd-stoner who combines the most annoying traits of both stereotypes and whose every line of dialogue sounds like vomit dribbling from the gaping maw of a mad drunk; Andy (Mike Vogel, the sexy outlaw from Under the Dome), the sexy rebel - a real stretch, performance-wise; Pepper (Erica Leerhsen of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2), a sexy hitchhiker whose thirst for Andy rivals Leatherface's thirst for blood; Kemper (Eric Balfour of the first episode of Buffy), the sexy hick with a chip on his shoulder; and Erin (Jessica Biel of The A-Team), the sexy girlfriend of said sexy hick - soon to be his sexy fiancée if he has anything to say about it.

The kiddos are driving through the countryside to a Skynyrd concert in Dallas. As if that wasn't tip-off enough, Texas Chainsaw is set in 1973, the same year as the original film. On their way they pick up another Hitchhiker (Lauren German), who blows her head off after shouting about her friends all dying. They pull off at the nearest gas station and are sent to a mill to await the Sheriff. As they wait and wait, they soon realize the nearby house will become their final resting place as Leatherface (Andrew Bryniarski), the Sheriff (R. Lee Ermey), and their family send them one by one to the basement workshop to be chainsaw massacred.

To be fair to them, how could this lovely home seem like there might be killers hiding inside?

The great thing about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is that it can be taken on its own. Its plot intersects with the plot of the original at so few points, it actually becomes a distinctly separate movie. This is greatly to its favor, because comparing any single horror film to Texas Chain Saw is like flinging spaghetti at a dartboard and hoping for a bull's eye.

And there are even some cases where the film - I wouldn't say "improves on," but it... extrapolates certain sequences from the Chain Saw structure to great effect. It is debatable whether this film's increase in gore improves the horror (I personally don't find it to do so - it's suitably disgusting and wet, but I find the whole film to be a little too slick to get under the skin), but something must be said for a girl watching a hulking killer attack while wearing her boyfriend's face. And a sequence with a meat hook and a piano is delightful in a sickening kind of way.

The film isn't afraid to up the ante and in today's world of anonymous studio horror, that is a quality to be much admired. Texas Chainsaw allows us to explore the entire deranged town, visit the nearby slaughterhouse, and see just how far gore prosthetic technology has come since the last entry in the franchise in 1994 (or 1997, once Matthew McConaughey got his way).

This gleeful excess is mirrored in the deliriously drippy and wet production design, which seems to have been inspired by that time I walked to class on a rainy day and forgot an umbrella. That or the filmmakers' fervent desire to keep Jessica Biel as soaking wet as possible. It's hilarious. No matter where she goes it rains on her, whether it be literal rain or the inexplicable flooding of Leatherface's workshop. At one point she manages to find a refuge but Leatherface triggers the fire sprinklers because the teen boys in the audience would likely implode if she spent one second without her sopping bosoms flapping about.

And yet this guy keeps his shirt on. Wasteful.

Joke all I might, I do enjoy my share of needlessly exploitative horror. It's always delightful to watch the filmmakers' obvious desperation to sexify even the most harrowing of scenarios. There's enough hot dudes around to not feel particularly misogynistic. But let me expound my theories on sexuality and exploitation in its own essay, I don't want to bog down this post like so much rainwater.

Here comes the part in the positive reviews where I dump all the negative things I have to say. Because, succeed as it might in distancing itself from Texas Chain Saw, this film is a remake and is thus beholden to comparisons. I've already mentioned the movie's distancing slickness, but the cold grey "gritty" aesthetic just doesn't do it for me in terms of this franchise's narrative universe. I associate Texas Chainsaw with oppressive heat and claustrophobia and that is just not the feeling this film gives off.

It's altogether shallow, and the film follows suit. Gone are the first films intensely angry political sentiments. It's understandable. 2003 was a wildly different societal climate than 1974, though the original time period has been needlessly retained (in fact, Erin's irritating moralizing stances, the fashion, and speech patterns actively disagree with the time period). 

There's more gore but less personality, and it's not necessarily a lesser movie because of it. It has different aims than the decades-gone original. But it's certainly a more superficial one.

But in spite of these shortcomings, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is certainly worth its salt. Its ability to be genuinely tense and creative paved the way for the battalions of remakes to come. Unfortunately but predictably, other studios followed the route of "slick and grey is cool" rather than "good horror movies make money" but what are you gonna do?

Watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The rest, as they say, is history. Let it confine itself to the books while you enjoy one of the most interesting reboots modern cinema has to offer.

TL;DR: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is obviously not as good as the original, but is wonderfully intense and fast-paced.

Rating: 7/10

Body Count: 8

1. The Hitchhiker shoots herself through the head.
2. Kemper is hit in the head with a sledgehammer.
3. Pepper is sliced with a chainsaw.
4. Andy has his leg sliced off, is hung on a meathook, and stabbed in the chest.
5. Morgan is hung on a chandelier and chainsawed in the crotch.
6. Sheriff Hoyt is run over with a police car. 
7. Officer #1 is killed with a chainsaw offscreen.
8. Officer #2 is killed with a chainsaw offscreen. 

Word Count: 1449

Reviews In This Series

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Hooper, 1986)
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (Burr, 1990)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (Henkel, 1994)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Nispel, 2003)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (Liebesman, 2006)
Texas Chainsaw 3D (Luessenhop, 2013)
Leatherface (Bustillo & Maury, 2017)