Okay, so I finished The Ruins by Scott Smith, and in many respects, it's a kick-ass book. It's really like a 500-page short story rather than a novel, and I mean that as a compliment. It's relentless, and the plot just chugs along constantly. It's a very effective suspense novel that kept me turning pages feverishly. I did find the exposition in the beginning a bit clunky, and until some key injuries, it was kind of hard to tell the main characters apart. It was pretty far into the novel before I had a sense of the characters as real people. He seems very distanced from them in the beginning of the book, and he throws a lot of information at the reader instead of showing us who the characters are. But, for all that, it's a tremendously effective nail-biter of a book.
And now, the spoilers. No, really. I'm writing about the end here. Don't read this part if you don't want the end spoiled.
Okay, having said that, this movie has the same problem that seems to be plaguing the horror genre in all its manifestations-- here's a bunch of people put into a deadly situation...and they all die! Sure enough, that death that seemed inevitable on page 60 turns out to really be inevitable. I mean, what the hell's the point? And, in this case, it just seems particularly cynical, because rather than showing any of the characters going out looking at all brave or resourceful, we just see them being petty and stupid--put to the ultimate test, they all end up being pretty contemptible. Ugh. And, I mean, they had 3 bottles of tequila and nobody thought to try to set the vine on fire? They just never seem to even contemplate fighting the vine as an option, which made for pretty dreary reading after a while.
I still recommend this book, but geez, we seem to be living in dark times. All the horror purveyors can give us is surrender to inevitable doom. Can't somebody fight back already?
