Starring Jena Malone, Shawn Ashmore. Written by Scott B. Smith, based on his novel. Directed by Carter Smith. (14A) 90 min.
Early on in The Ruins, the camera lingers on the bikini-and-speedo-clad bodies of college-age American tourists lounging by the pool at a Mexican resort. This being a horror film, we know that these kids are going to venture beyond their safe turista experience and get themselves into trouble — and that their conspicuously beautiful bodies are in for some serious blemishing.
But even genre-savvy viewers may not be prepared for the sheer gruesomeness of their misadventures. The Ruins, which has been adapted by Scott B. Smith from his own novel, is grueling viewing. We watch as the central quintet — comprised of two couples played by Shawn Ashmore and Laura Ramsey and Jeff Tucker and Jena Malone, along with an affable German (Joe Anderson) — go literally and figuratively to pieces after getting trapped atop an ancient Mayan monument shrouded in mysterious foliage.
Paranoia, spinal injuries, psychic distress, impromptu amputations, self-mutilation — it’s all in there, convincingly rendered (the first-rate sound design exacerbates every fracture) and finally pointless. This effectively made but severely unpleasant film is precisely the sort of empty exercise in sadism that invites (and perhaps even condones) the chiding of a certain pedagogically-minded Austrian auteur: The Ruins deserves to be double-billed with Funny Games.