Cast/Notable Credits:
Carter Smith (Director)Jonathan Tucker (Jeff): The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hostage (2005), Pulse, Masters of Horror: Dance of the Dead (2006)
Jena Malone (Amy): Contact (1997), Donnie Darko (2001), Cold Mountain (2003)
Laura Ramsey (Stacy): Venom, The Covenant (2006) (Pictured Left)
Shawn Ashmore (Eric): X-men Triliogy (2000, 2003, 2006), The Quiet (2005)
Trailer:
Everyone needs a good killer plant flick. Just not this one. For the record, I wanted to embrace this film, but found myself feeling…well nothing at all. Don't get me wrong, it's not completely horrible, but I couldn’t get overly excited about the film. I tried. I wanted to. But no. I’ve seen more enjoyable killer plant movies that didn’t have near the production quality of this one.
Top 5 Killer Plant Movies:
5. The Day of the Triffids (1962):
I just don’t know what to say. World blindness…a common side effect from masturbation…not everyone in the world could have been doing this. Or could they? I bet Robot Chicken’s chronic masturbation smurf is rejoicing! Also there were bad looking monster plants and the cure: sea water? Huh? I’m just lost for words, but this movie is still a classic.
4. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978):
A cult classic. It was the truth about tomatoes before the salmonella scare. They knew back then. They knew!
3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978):
What a coincidence, it came out in 78’ also. The ultimate Pod People movie. It starred the “younger” Donald Sutherland…still looking old. By the way, what’s with him and starring in “alien invasion” movies? Remember the Puppet Master (1994)?
On a side note: he starred in a 1975 film named “The Day of the Locust”, and his character’s name was…Homer Simpson. D’oh!
2. Little Shop of Horrors (1986):
“Feed Me, Seymour!”
Rick Moranis and Steve Martin. How could you go wrong? Unfortunately it’s a musical. Not too big on musicals.
1. Matango (1963)…or in the U.S.A. known as…Attack of the Mushroom People:
Just turn on the English subtitles along with the English audio when you watch. The two are TOTALLY not in sync with each other, and not necessary reading off of the same script. Example:
There was a scene where a few guys were trying to pull together and get the basics organized.
Audio: “We need to work together to get to survive.”
English subtitle: “Women, go get some water.”
Then the next scene shows the ONLY two women down by the ocean filling up buckets with water while several guys stand along the rail of a beached boat watching them work. I could see the “boys” talking amongst themselves.
Guy #1: “Yeah, I’d tap that ass.”
Guy #2: “Wow look at her bend over as she gets the water. I’d tap that too.”
Guy #3 with a grin on his face: “Yeah, I’m tapping that.”
If you haven’t seen any of those killer plant movies then go check them out. If you’ve seen them, then check them out again. While this one is not quite as good as those movies, it still had some good qualities.
The movie starts off with some unknown girl crying a weeping in the dark in some sort of cave. As she cries out for help, something grabs her and pulls her into the darkness. Then the beginning credits go up and we meet up with our soon to be dead couples…well we don’t know that yet, and neither do they. Two smokin’ hot chicks, Amy and Stacy, are wearing bikinis at poolside of some Cancun resort. Also lounging around with them are their two boyfriends, Jeff and Eric.
Amy is laying down sunbathing and then gets up out of the blue and starts worrying about a lost earring. Come on...really? How many chicks actually just go…”I lost an earring”? Everyone I’ve known the missing earring has been pointed out or they were taking them off and then just noticed it was missing. I haven’t met one just laying down and then popped up going, “where’s my earring?”
After they scrounge around for the missing earring, Stacy comments, “maybe it’s in the pool.” Then we see some other guy (Mathias) ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE POOL, pick up a snorkel mask and next thing we know, he’s handing an earring to Amy. “Is this your ring?” WTF!? You’re telling me that some guy hears a conversation across the pool about a lost earring as people are swimming the pool, yelling, splashing, etc. Right. What do I call that? A stalker. Correction: a stalker with good hearing.
Mathias goes on to introduce himself to the four and invites them go on a hike to a Mayan ruin in the morning and shows them a hand drawn map of the ruin left by his brother. His brother had left earlier with an archaeologist to see this ruin, and he was going to catch up with his brother tomorrow. Mathias also points out some Greek guys swimming were going on the hike also. One of the Greek guys invites them to a beach party that night.
Friendly place huh?
So the four of them go to the beach party that night and Amy gets “trashed” and makes a pass at Mathias shortly after her boyfriend Jeff left for the night. The Amy character has NOT won my affection by now. In fact, I was starting to get a little annoyed with her. My displeasure with Amy really took off the next morning. She has already come across being drunk, and annoying. Now she starts off on her whiny spoiled little bitch act as her boyfriend motivates her for the hike. “I don’t wanna go. You go. I’ll just stay here and sleep.” Boo hoo. That’s what you get for getting shit-faced, now get your ass out of bed. Only I’m saying under my breath, “Yeah, you should stay here, because I know you’re gonna die pretty soon.” But in reality, I wanted her to go…and get killed that is.
So Amy “whine”-house (Jena Malone...pictured above) and her friends take off with Mathias and one of the Greek dudes, Dimitri, to see the ruin. The other Greek dudes had better things to do. Like drink. The Mayan ruin is not an ordinary ruin. It’s a secret ancient ruin, not like most of the tourist ruins around and is some seventeen miles away and another two mile hike in the jungle off a “hidden” path. With all the topographic maps and satellite imaging now a days, I find this quite hard to believe, but let’s roll with it. The six get dropped off in some little rat-hole village and look for a taxi to take them the rest of the way.
First sign that you should probably listened to Amy "whine"-house and not go on this “nature hike”: the Mexican taxi driver looks at the map refuses to drop you off there and says, “It’s no good. Bad.”
Logically what do you do next? Bribe him with an American $20 bill of course. And then you’re off to see the ruin, the wonderful ruin of oz. A $20 bill! That’s how much the Mexican dude sells out for?
“No, no don’t go that way evils lurks, place is cursed, you’ll die. Oh wait...a $20 bill, then never mind, I’ll take you there.”
Remind me to follow the advice of a crazy, old Mexican taxi driver if I’m ever down that way exploring ancient Mayan ruins. Without any hesitation, they bribed the taxi driver and they’re off. They arrive at the location and find the archaeologist's’s deserted jeep and decide to journey off into the jungle. They come across two native children who refused to go near them and find the “hidden” trail to lead them to the ruin. After a short hike, the six arrive at the Mayan ruin, only to find no one else around, except until some crazy Mayans show up cursing at them in a foreign language. This probably is a second sign that they should have listened to Amy "whine"-house. But it’s probably too late by now. Or is it?
Amy “whine”-house is standing at the base of the ruin snapping off photographs with her camera as the Mayans yell at the six idiots.
Dimitri goes over and takes the camera away as it seems to be irritating the Mayans. He attempts to walk over to the Mayans to give them the camera when…BANG! They shoot him. It’s about damn time we see some action. The remaining five run up the ruin as the Mayans do not attempt to follow, instead they create a perimeter around the ruin as more of them appear.
The remaining five reach the top of the ruin to find a deserted base camp left from the archaeologist and Mathias’s brother, and no one else in sight but the crazy Mayan people camping out down below. There are a couple of tents and a pull rope elevator that leads down a shaft presumably to the bottom of the inside of the ruin. Of course, no one can get cell phone reception to call for help. Didn't see that one coming.
But wait! They hear a cell phone ring coming from the bottom of the ruin. They must have the "network". Matias, Jeff and Eric want to go down the shaft to retrieve the cell phone. Two of them operate the "rope elevator" lowering one down the shaft. But danger is near! Stacy notices that the rope is about to snap as they scramble to hoist him up. Snap! The rope breaks and someone falls down the shaft into the darkness. He got the shaft! After a comedy of errors, two of the parties are injured laying in the dark at the bottom of the ruin. The three left at top side spend the rest of the afternoon working on getting the two injured back up to topside, which they successfully do, and of course making their situation worse doing it.
They end up staying the night sleeping in a tent on top of the ruin and awake the next morning to find a new development in their situation. Mysterious plant vines are growing out of the wounds of the two injured parties. The vines seem to match the ones that decorate the outside of the ruins. Could we be seeing hints to a plant monster? Hmmm.
Down below the crazy Mayan people are still camped out at the base of the ruin not attempting to go up but acting as watchdog preventing anyone from leaving. Probably the final sign that you should have listened to Amy “whine”-house and stayed in bed that morning. As days go one, the five realize that they are being quarantined by the Mayan people on the ruin, because they’re infected by some virus/alien life-form plant that inhabits the ruin. I guess the first concrete evidence of being quarantined is when "Whine"-house threw a vine at one of the Mayan kids and they shot him on site. Those crazy Mayans don't f*ck around.
Soon they see the Weed Monster slowly come to life (not like weed as in “cuz I got high, cuz I got high…”). The Weed Monster goes after the five as conditions worse and they debate whether to wait for help to
come, get taken by the Weed Monster or make a run for it and hope the Crazy Mayan people shoot like Storm troopers as they attempt to get to the jeep. Man, what a pickle. Get eaten by the Weed Monster, or get shot by the crazy Mayans. If they stay and wait for help, who will prevail? My bets are on the Weed Monster. But then again, my bets are ALWAYS on the Weed Monster.
After seeing the Unrated Film version in it's entirety and watching the alternative ending and theatrical ending in the special features section of the DVD, I'm glad I didn't see it in the theater. I would have been pissed. It had the "Hollywood" ending to the film where as the Unrated DVD version said, "F*ck it, we'll do what we want." I probably would have never rented this movie if I saw it in the theater.
One of the disappointments in this movie for me was it's nudity. We get a side-boob. That’s it. A side-boob? Come on’. All or nothing baby. That’s a tease. Those things come in pairs! Pairs come in two's. Laura Ramsey (pictured below) gave us uno. It was a great uno, but multiply that times two.
The Ruins did satisfy some of my horror needs during a creepy sequence. It came when someone needed to get their legs chopped off to prevent further infection. At least that's what Dr. Jeff wanted. They were limited in tools, so they used a rock to break the bones and cut away the vine-infected legs with a hunting knife. Not really pleasant to think about. I think I would have chosen to go down to the firing line with the crazy Mayans.
I felt the film had to "manufacture" some of its suspense to make this story a little believable, hence the comedy of errors. I was also disappointed in the use of the Weed Monster. Should have used it more and earlier in the film, because in the end, it didn’t give me any satisfaction or fear. It was a waste of a Weed Monster in my opinion. Give us Weed or Give us Death. Unfortunately neither were plentiful.
Misc. Movie Trivia:
-Film opened on April 4, 2008 and made $17.4 million at the box office ($8 million opening weekend)
-Unrated version and Theatrical version had different endings
I just don’t know what to say. World blindness…a common side effect from masturbation…not everyone in the world could have been doing this. Or could they? I bet Robot Chicken’s chronic masturbation smurf is rejoicing! Also there were bad looking monster plants and the cure: sea water? Huh? I’m just lost for words, but this movie is still a classic.4. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978):
A cult classic. It was the truth about tomatoes before the salmonella scare. They knew back then. They knew!
3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978):
What a coincidence, it came out in 78’ also. The ultimate Pod People movie. It starred the “younger” Donald Sutherland…still looking old. By the way, what’s with him and starring in “alien invasion” movies? Remember the Puppet Master (1994)?
On a side note: he starred in a 1975 film named “The Day of the Locust”, and his character’s name was…Homer Simpson. D’oh!
2. Little Shop of Horrors (1986):
“Feed Me, Seymour!”Rick Moranis and Steve Martin. How could you go wrong? Unfortunately it’s a musical. Not too big on musicals.
1. Matango (1963)…or in the U.S.A. known as…Attack of the Mushroom People:
Just turn on the English subtitles along with the English audio when you watch. The two are TOTALLY not in sync with each other, and not necessary reading off of the same script. Example:
There was a scene where a few guys were trying to pull together and get the basics organized.
Audio: “We need to work together to get to survive.”
English subtitle: “Women, go get some water.”
Then the next scene shows the ONLY two women down by the ocean filling up buckets with water while several guys stand along the rail of a beached boat watching them work. I could see the “boys” talking amongst themselves.
Guy #1: “Yeah, I’d tap that ass.”
Guy #2: “Wow look at her bend over as she gets the water. I’d tap that too.”
Guy #3 with a grin on his face: “Yeah, I’m tapping that.”
If you haven’t seen any of those killer plant movies then go check them out. If you’ve seen them, then check them out again. While this one is not quite as good as those movies, it still had some good qualities.
The movie starts off with some unknown girl crying a weeping in the dark in some sort of cave. As she cries out for help, something grabs her and pulls her into the darkness. Then the beginning credits go up and we meet up with our soon to be dead couples…well we don’t know that yet, and neither do they. Two smokin’ hot chicks, Amy and Stacy, are wearing bikinis at poolside of some Cancun resort. Also lounging around with them are their two boyfriends, Jeff and Eric.
Amy is laying down sunbathing and then gets up out of the blue and starts worrying about a lost earring. Come on...really? How many chicks actually just go…”I lost an earring”? Everyone I’ve known the missing earring has been pointed out or they were taking them off and then just noticed it was missing. I haven’t met one just laying down and then popped up going, “where’s my earring?”
After they scrounge around for the missing earring, Stacy comments, “maybe it’s in the pool.” Then we see some other guy (Mathias) ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE POOL, pick up a snorkel mask and next thing we know, he’s handing an earring to Amy. “Is this your ring?” WTF!? You’re telling me that some guy hears a conversation across the pool about a lost earring as people are swimming the pool, yelling, splashing, etc. Right. What do I call that? A stalker. Correction: a stalker with good hearing.
Mathias goes on to introduce himself to the four and invites them go on a hike to a Mayan ruin in the morning and shows them a hand drawn map of the ruin left by his brother. His brother had left earlier with an archaeologist to see this ruin, and he was going to catch up with his brother tomorrow. Mathias also points out some Greek guys swimming were going on the hike also. One of the Greek guys invites them to a beach party that night.
Friendly place huh?
So the four of them go to the beach party that night and Amy gets “trashed” and makes a pass at Mathias shortly after her boyfriend Jeff left for the night. The Amy character has NOT won my affection by now. In fact, I was starting to get a little annoyed with her. My displeasure with Amy really took off the next morning. She has already come across being drunk, and annoying. Now she starts off on her whiny spoiled little bitch act as her boyfriend motivates her for the hike. “I don’t wanna go. You go. I’ll just stay here and sleep.” Boo hoo. That’s what you get for getting shit-faced, now get your ass out of bed. Only I’m saying under my breath, “Yeah, you should stay here, because I know you’re gonna die pretty soon.” But in reality, I wanted her to go…and get killed that is.
So Amy “whine”-house (Jena Malone...pictured above) and her friends take off with Mathias and one of the Greek dudes, Dimitri, to see the ruin. The other Greek dudes had better things to do. Like drink. The Mayan ruin is not an ordinary ruin. It’s a secret ancient ruin, not like most of the tourist ruins around and is some seventeen miles away and another two mile hike in the jungle off a “hidden” path. With all the topographic maps and satellite imaging now a days, I find this quite hard to believe, but let’s roll with it. The six get dropped off in some little rat-hole village and look for a taxi to take them the rest of the way.
First sign that you should probably listened to Amy "whine"-house and not go on this “nature hike”: the Mexican taxi driver looks at the map refuses to drop you off there and says, “It’s no good. Bad.”
Logically what do you do next? Bribe him with an American $20 bill of course. And then you’re off to see the ruin, the wonderful ruin of oz. A $20 bill! That’s how much the Mexican dude sells out for?
“No, no don’t go that way evils lurks, place is cursed, you’ll die. Oh wait...a $20 bill, then never mind, I’ll take you there.”
Remind me to follow the advice of a crazy, old Mexican taxi driver if I’m ever down that way exploring ancient Mayan ruins. Without any hesitation, they bribed the taxi driver and they’re off. They arrive at the location and find the archaeologist's’s deserted jeep and decide to journey off into the jungle. They come across two native children who refused to go near them and find the “hidden” trail to lead them to the ruin. After a short hike, the six arrive at the Mayan ruin, only to find no one else around, except until some crazy Mayans show up cursing at them in a foreign language. This probably is a second sign that they should have listened to Amy "whine"-house. But it’s probably too late by now. Or is it?
Amy “whine”-house is standing at the base of the ruin snapping off photographs with her camera as the Mayans yell at the six idiots.
Dimitri goes over and takes the camera away as it seems to be irritating the Mayans. He attempts to walk over to the Mayans to give them the camera when…BANG! They shoot him. It’s about damn time we see some action. The remaining five run up the ruin as the Mayans do not attempt to follow, instead they create a perimeter around the ruin as more of them appear.The remaining five reach the top of the ruin to find a deserted base camp left from the archaeologist and Mathias’s brother, and no one else in sight but the crazy Mayan people camping out down below. There are a couple of tents and a pull rope elevator that leads down a shaft presumably to the bottom of the inside of the ruin. Of course, no one can get cell phone reception to call for help. Didn't see that one coming.
But wait! They hear a cell phone ring coming from the bottom of the ruin. They must have the "network". Matias, Jeff and Eric want to go down the shaft to retrieve the cell phone. Two of them operate the "rope elevator" lowering one down the shaft. But danger is near! Stacy notices that the rope is about to snap as they scramble to hoist him up. Snap! The rope breaks and someone falls down the shaft into the darkness. He got the shaft! After a comedy of errors, two of the parties are injured laying in the dark at the bottom of the ruin. The three left at top side spend the rest of the afternoon working on getting the two injured back up to topside, which they successfully do, and of course making their situation worse doing it.
They end up staying the night sleeping in a tent on top of the ruin and awake the next morning to find a new development in their situation. Mysterious plant vines are growing out of the wounds of the two injured parties. The vines seem to match the ones that decorate the outside of the ruins. Could we be seeing hints to a plant monster? Hmmm.
Down below the crazy Mayan people are still camped out at the base of the ruin not attempting to go up but acting as watchdog preventing anyone from leaving. Probably the final sign that you should have listened to Amy “whine”-house and stayed in bed that morning. As days go one, the five realize that they are being quarantined by the Mayan people on the ruin, because they’re infected by some virus/alien life-form plant that inhabits the ruin. I guess the first concrete evidence of being quarantined is when "Whine"-house threw a vine at one of the Mayan kids and they shot him on site. Those crazy Mayans don't f*ck around.
Soon they see the Weed Monster slowly come to life (not like weed as in “cuz I got high, cuz I got high…”). The Weed Monster goes after the five as conditions worse and they debate whether to wait for help to
come, get taken by the Weed Monster or make a run for it and hope the Crazy Mayan people shoot like Storm troopers as they attempt to get to the jeep. Man, what a pickle. Get eaten by the Weed Monster, or get shot by the crazy Mayans. If they stay and wait for help, who will prevail? My bets are on the Weed Monster. But then again, my bets are ALWAYS on the Weed Monster.After seeing the Unrated Film version in it's entirety and watching the alternative ending and theatrical ending in the special features section of the DVD, I'm glad I didn't see it in the theater. I would have been pissed. It had the "Hollywood" ending to the film where as the Unrated DVD version said, "F*ck it, we'll do what we want." I probably would have never rented this movie if I saw it in the theater.
One of the disappointments in this movie for me was it's nudity. We get a side-boob. That’s it. A side-boob? Come on’. All or nothing baby. That’s a tease. Those things come in pairs! Pairs come in two's. Laura Ramsey (pictured below) gave us uno. It was a great uno, but multiply that times two.
The Ruins did satisfy some of my horror needs during a creepy sequence. It came when someone needed to get their legs chopped off to prevent further infection. At least that's what Dr. Jeff wanted. They were limited in tools, so they used a rock to break the bones and cut away the vine-infected legs with a hunting knife. Not really pleasant to think about. I think I would have chosen to go down to the firing line with the crazy Mayans.
I felt the film had to "manufacture" some of its suspense to make this story a little believable, hence the comedy of errors. I was also disappointed in the use of the Weed Monster. Should have used it more and earlier in the film, because in the end, it didn’t give me any satisfaction or fear. It was a waste of a Weed Monster in my opinion. Give us Weed or Give us Death. Unfortunately neither were plentiful.
Misc. Movie Trivia:
-Film opened on April 4, 2008 and made $17.4 million at the box office ($8 million opening weekend)
-Unrated version and Theatrical version had different endings
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