I had such high hopes for this movie. My mistake. The book was good, really good. You can check out my reviews of the book by following the links below:

THE RUINS by Scott Smith pt 1
THE RUINS by Scott Smith (Finished)

I think that the reason that I had such high hopes for the movie was that The Ruins movie website had really great stills of some of the best scenes from the book. However, those pictured scenes are nowhere to be found in the theater. Nope, you will not see the rain scene, Jeff meticulously preparing to cut Mathias’ legs off, or several others.

The power of the book that was lost in movie is the anticipation and buildup leading to the painful experiences that you knew must come. The movie was so short. Some of these extra scenes could have been left in.

I really wanted the hand job scene with Eric that led up to the morning after where the plant had fed off his sperm and crawled up his urethra. I really wanted to see the group trying to decide weather or not to eat their fallen comrade. I really wanted more.

Yet, the movie was fun. I had a good time watching a bunch of early twenty-some-things be picked off one by one by an evil plant. I’m very glad that they keep the part where one of the guys falls into the pit and breaks his back; I think the most painful part to watch in the movie was when the two girls lift him onto the back brace and you can hear his bones crack and scrape against one another.

Over all, I’m glad that I saw the movie. I like movies that are based on books. I like to look for everything that the director and the screen writer left out. In this case, I think that the book was already so obviously a screen play that I thought no one could botch it, but it was botched. The strange part is that I don’t mind it being botched. It justifies reading the book.

Read the book!

The Soulless Machine