This fortnight, M. Night’s Shyamalan The Happening and Carter Smith’s The Ruins. seek to return this disreputable trope to its, ahem, roots. Both films attempt to recapture the horror at the heart of John Wyndham’s timeless 1951 classic, The Day Of The Triffids. And like that compelling dystopian yarn, The Ruins understands how little it takes to strip humanity of its evolutionary advantages.
A clever script from Scott B. Smith, who previously penned the excellent novel and adapted screenplay for A Simple Plan, piles on voguish devices. With a nod to the zeitgeist there’s a touch of impending Mayan-apocalypse in the set up. Variously irritating American backpackers – sensible Amy, slutty Stacy, twitty Eric, funny “Pablo,” and Mathias, the token German - head off into the Mexican jungle despite warnings from the locals. There, nature decides to make them her bitch through the agency of infectious, super-intelligent murderous weeds.
The film makes merry with this USA versus the Third World subtext and often plays like a mischievous ecological answer to the rape-revenge fantasy. Newcomer Carter Smith adds to the fun with what may be the best onscreen use of a mobile phone to date.
Still, you can’t quite escape the preposterousness of the premise. It’s hard to take an antagonist seriously when it might be defeated by salt or excessive shade. It may be a valiant and entertaining effort, but you keep expecting a Final Girl to pop up with Weedol and the war-cry ‘Photosynthesise this’.