Little Mound of Horrors

I was working on my entry for Season 1 of The Tudors. Slow going, for some reason Blogger hates my work computer. But then I sat down at my mom's house tonight, and watched...The Ruins.

Mind you, I didn't actually WANT to watch this. I read the book in '08, and that's a series of time I will NEVER GET BACK. The horrors, the horrors. But I left it on without thinking about it, and who should appear on the screen but Joe Anderson.



For those who don't recognize this very pretty Kurt Cobain-look alike, he played Max in Across The Universe, which is one of my top five all-time favorite movies. He can sing, he can dance, he can look at me with those eyes and get happiness in the form of a warm gun anytime.

::sigh:: I guess I have to watch the damn movie after all.



This is another hour and some odd of my time I won't be getting back.

It starts out with a scene of a girl in a dark room, holding a cell phone, screaming for help. Seeing as how I've already read the book, I know how this works, and I'm bored. Then we meet the group of vapid young adults who we are eventually supposed to have sympathy for.



Guess how many of them I actually felt sympathy for? See above re: musical boy. Who really gets the short end of the stick in this movie.

Jena Malone usually picks much better roles. She was in Saved! for Christ's sake. She was in Donnie Darko! Come on, Jena, don't crap out on me now. And Shawn Ashmore? He was in X-Men! I'm not a comic book buff, but even I know that puts you pretty high up in the rankings.

The other two I have no idea who you are, and therefore do not care about your careers.

I will give it up for the movie makers in that the creep factor was actually here with this movie. It does what the book couldn't do, which is make you fear ever walking into thick grass/vines again. The plants mimicking human sound was just as stupid, however.

And I realized when the movie was first promoted that it was in the gore porn genre, so I expected a gross-out factor. And they certainly did provide that. I mean, the scenes where pointless guy cuts the vines out of pointless girl? That was really disgustingly nasty.

But really, this movie could've been over in less than 30 minutes. It could've been a short and sweet episode of Tales From the Crypt. Which I miss deeply. Kids go up the hill. Kids have teh sex. Plants attack. Kids get eaten by plants. The end!

I enjoy good torture porn. I enjoyed the first three Saws. Haven't seen the last 18, though. I'm sure I'll get there someday. But I prefer plot with my porn, on all fronts. And the plot of this movie was thinner than the girls' tank tops.

This movie made $17 million in the box office. That's $17 million that could've gone to buy much more important things. Like dental floss. And toenail clippers. Or anything else that would provide more entertainment than this.

Whedon Six Degrees of Separation: Shawn Ashmore, who plays Eric, dated Michelle Trachtenberg, who played Dawn on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Thank you.