The Ruins (2008)
A pair of holidaying couples visit an ancient Mayan ruin in a remote region of Mexico. When they arrive they are treated as hostile by locals who refuse to let them off the temple once they have touched the vines growing all round it and will kill anyone who attempts to leave.
I think this is a genuinely original horror film. The location is excellent even if it was shot in Australia rather than Mexico or South America. The concept that the vines are carnivorous could have been laughable but The Ruins is anything but laughable in fact the second half isn't exactly what you'd call fun either..
What begins as quirky, avoid the plant life stuff, quickly gives way to genuine dread and creepy as f*ck psychological horror. It may not be the goriest film you'll come across but the gore when applied is genuinely shocking, especially an amputation sequence. The vines not only eat flesh, their spores also burrow beneath the skin when touched and the vines slowly begin to grow inside a persons body. It's proper skin crawling stuff, in fact my head is itching like mad merely typing these words. The second half of the movie ratchets up the tension no end culminating in what is a pretty bleak and horribly grim final twenty minutes of body horror Cronenberg would be proud of.
I've seen this a few times since it was released on dvd back in 2008 and over time it's become one of my favourite horror films of the first quarter of the 21st century.
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