One scene bugged me - when the group of 20-somethings are stuck at the camp on the top of the pyramid and things are getting bad, the blond chick decides to give her boyfriend a handjob......wtf? Did the intravenous vines tell her to do that? And speaking of the vines, it's no wonder the trailers never indicated that killer vines were the "monster" (trailer made it seem like X-Files-type Black Oil worms) as no matter how well the effect is done, moving, sentient (and vocalizing - lol!) foliage is just stupid. It's as dumb in a 60's episode of Lost in Space as it is in a 2008 multi-million buck horror flick. And please, the ending with the lone survivor revealed as having them nasty vines in her system almost begs for a 50's Ib Melchoir sci-fi b-flick "THE END.......?" tagline.

It really appears the American movie industry is incapable of making a decent horror flick without a bunch of college douchebag leads. How an old, classic actor like Christopher Lee still finds work in the current mainstream movie climate is one of the mysteries of the 21st Century.

Ok who the hell is Steve Prakogy? Or Steve something from AICN whos name is on the cover of the Ruins? I've been seeing that more and more these days on movie posters and the such. I think the first one I saw was for Nightwatch. There should be a list somewhere (until it gets too big) of all the stuff with AICN on it, from TWBB to Southland Tales, to the Signal. My co-worker was telling me how I read just a fanboy page no one cares about, then I showed him the TWBB movie page where AICN blurb is like the second or third on the list. And he was a huge fan of TWBB (well because Rottentomatoes gave it such good scores how could he not?).

"I don't remember the handjob in the film. In the book she gives him a handjob. And it's the kind of thing that works very well in the book because, well, if you've read it you know that you get inside the character's heads."

It's in the movie, at least in the home video dvd and blu-ray release. The way it's presented in the movie, it seems very arbitrary and clumsily staged like someone thought "oh shit, we don't have any sex between these twenty-somethings, just shoehorn this quick little jerkoff scene .....uhhh, HERE!"

Series7 sez:

"Christopher Lee can't find work anymore, everyone cuts him out of their movies."

Well, he's getting work and he's getting paid, so my comment stands. Yeah it sucks his parts are getting hacked outta movies though. It supports his statement that modern directors and producers don't have a clue to what they're doing when they bother to cast him in roles (with the questionable exception of Tim Burton) and wind up cutting his footage. BTW, wanna see Lee really shine in a relatively recent lead role, track down the very tough to find "Jinnah." It's not some sci-fi/horror/fantasy flick but it does feature Lee in one of the top 5 best leads of his career.

One last comment about the blu-ray version of "The Ruins," it's being discovered that the disc will not load on some blu-ray players, notably the newer Panasonic players. You have to turn off the "24 frame output" feature to get it to load properly. It's a problem some new Paramount blu-ray titles seem to have.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

BTW, I watched the blu-ray of Batman Begins last night. The movie looks pretty good if a bit soft in hidef, but the 10 minute IMAX filmed preview of The Dark Knight looks absolutely stunning in 1080p.