THE RUINS: A MOVIE REVIEW
THE RUIN (2008)
From this the film tone changes abruptly, as the moviegoer sees a cluster of young folks interacting at a beach resort someplace “down Mexico way.” Among those focused upon are “Amy” (Jena Malone) and her pal, “Stacy” (Laura Ramsay), who are young, pretty, shapely, bikinied and picking up some sunrays. They have respective boyfriends, “Jeff” (Jonathon Tucker) and “Eric” (Shawn Ashmore). This section is something akin to a teen flick, except that I thought it was commendably executed with Stacy and Eric putting in the best performance. There are others there that are encountered, especially a German, “Mathias” (Joe Anderson) and a couple of Greeks, including “Dimitri” (Dimitri Baveas). It’s something of an international crowd of mostly young folks. They seem to get along well enough. So, this section has a very natural and mundane quality. People are relaxed and enjoying themselves.
Frankly, it is the perfect spot to through in some unexpected fireworks.
Mathias has a relative who is an archaeologist, or some such, and is in the Central American jungle, digging at a Mayan ruin. He and Dimitri plan to go to the site. He hasn’t heard from her in a bit. At any rate they want to check out the ruin. They ask the winning American foursome if they’d be interested in going there. Although Amy isn’t enthusiastic, she finally agrees.
They hire a cab to take them as close as possible. When the driver (Patricio Almeida Rodriguez) hears what their destination is, he tries to dissuade them: “No! That is a bad place!” However, they ante up enough cash, and he agrees. This is the moviegoer’s second alert that things are going to gety unpleasant.
Near the ruins they see the vehicles of Mathias’s relative and get out there, planning to walk the rest of the way. Mathias has a crude map. Along the way they get a bit lost, see some mute and staring kids, and finally regain the trail, which had intentionally been hidden with branches. These are further warnings. The kids are native Indians, speaking no Spanish. Stacy tries to communicate to no avail. The kids’s stares and silence constitute a mildly outre event. The hidden trail must be considered as an implied warning not to go there.
The coed crew of brazen interlopers soon find the ruin. It seems routine, excepting the leafy vines that cover it from base to summit crest. It appears to be “stepped” with an ample flattened top. One notices that there is bare earth for some ten yards out from its base and completely surrounding it. Still, for most moviegoers is is almost a subliminal form of information, for hardly had they reached the pyramid, when a middle-aged man (Sergio Calderon) appears on the scene, riding a horse. He isn’t friendly. Soon it is apparent that he is not alone.
When Dimitri, who along with others, begins to take photographs of him, the angry rider draws a firearm. Dimitri, trying to lessen any misunderstanding, approaches the rider with his digital held high and issuing soothing words: “Camera, it’s a camera.” He’s shot dead, as the rider was intuitively proceeding along lines of Trojan wisdom.
Horrified, the others retreat to the summit of the ruin. More Indians show up and surround the ruin. They are typically armed with bow-n-arrow, bowgun, machete, or firearm.
It’s pretty clear to the coed tourists that they are going nowhere fast. Worse, their cell phones don’t seem to work in the boondocks. Mathias’s relative had one, and he seems certain that it’s around somewhere, as he had spoke to her a couple days ago. They make a little camp. There is a central “well” by which one might descend to the bottom of the ruin’s interior. Mathias proceeds to go down–what else!–the rope breaks, and he falls to the basement floor. Yep! Broken leg. What to do? Stacy is “volunteered” to go down and get Mathias attached to a cord so they could raise him up. Before she got down, she fell, impaling her leg on something, such as a knife. Still, she secured Mathias, and up he went.
Folks, this darkened chamber gives off strange sounds among which is that of a ringing cell phone. When Stacy tries to find it, she locates rotten bodies. Possible tie-in to films preamble? Go figure! As crazy as it seems, these numerous vines with their “cheeky” blooms are getting downright menacing. She does get back to the surface, but not before a vine “sneaks a feel.” What’s going down?!
Topside, the coed tourist team is getting a bit testy with one another. Mathias’s leg is pretty bad. Now, Stacy begins to show signs of impregnation–vine style. These two get progressively worse. Water is getting low. Food is getting low. Morale is getting low, especially when they discover that the damn flowers on the vines are making cell phone noises! They can mimic.
Finally, one night the vines sneak attack Mathias’s leg. When Jeff uncovers the leg, it has been eaten to the bone–literally. Jeff announces that he’ll have to cut off the leg. Hey! Not to worry! He’s pre-med, doncha know? Well, he gave it the old college try. Now, the issue of hunger leads the dwindling number to consider cannibalism. Why let Mathias go to waste?
There are bloody confrontations amongst the increasingly vine-madded coeds. Eric takes a blade. Stacy dissects herself. Folks, it gets ugly.
Down below, the Indians are having a vertiable ritual “hoe-down.” The vines are uppity and carnivorous. This is no place for nice white college kids.
Jeff tells his gal, Amy, “we’ve got to make a run for it.” She’s all for fleeing, but what about the hostiles at the base? Jeff works out a plan whereby he’ll distract the Indians, while she runs for the car belonging to Mathias’s relative. (They located the keys to it on the summit earlier.) They proceed with the plan. Amy runs like a deer. As she runs, she hears a shot. In a few moments she realises that the indians are on her trail. She gets to the vehicle , gets on the driver’s seat, puts the key in the ignition slot, and turns it. Guess what happens? Of course, it won’t start! Not until she’s “paid her dues” in blood, sweat and tears. Then, it and she roar. Bat out of hell, folks.
In my view the plants just don’t get it as horror movie “critters.” Those of you who saw “Little House of Horrors” witnessed a more scary flora-nstein monster than these rather grabby twigs in bloom. Now, their effect once inside a human was a bit “ooey-gooey”–not to mention decidedly gory. However, the gore is typically not specifically due to the vines. It can be repellent. Be advised. Incidentally, the “monster’s design” was created by Patrick Tatopoulos. He may have had some disturbing event in his young life, such as being “held down” in a bed of ivy by bigger boys, which seared his mind. Maybe he should seek emotional help from a floral psychologist.
All rights reserved. Gobigfoot, 2008.
Fun-N-Games: “Wow Gold”
buy wow gold Although there are people who inveigh against lives focused on the cyber-world, I believe that the issue has little substance. I like video and cyber-world and intend to indulge my pleasure. Still, it is perfectly possible to be an exercise buff and a cyber-world denizen at the same time, using the new mobile functions of a large range of portables. However, achieving maximum pleasure for the videogames and for the wide range of pleasurable experiences found in cyber-world, I subscribe to the view that there's "no place like home."
Recently, I had a tip about “Wow Gold” and checked it out. Pretty kool set of games. Still, I must say that they will appeal more to those “into” martial action than to the tea party set. My favorite was the Lord of the Rings game. It has a good look to it and lots of fun. City Heroes/Villains (either US or EU) was another favorite. Also worth mentioning is World of Warcraft (US or EU), which is imaginatively done.
Incidentally, the game series is very reasonably priced and processing is a breeze. Check it out!
Gobigfoot, 2008.
PROM NIGHT: A MOVIE REVIEW
PROM NIGHT (2008)
“I love you.” He came closer. “Nothing can stand in the way of our love.” Slash, wack, slash, stab, stab, stab!
This gives you a notion of the core values found in the antagonist in this movie, “Richard Fenton” (Johnathon Schaech). Incidentally, he’s a teacher and makes Pink Floyd’s menacing teachers mere puppies.
Who does he love? Glad you asked. Apparently, “Teach” Fenton digs teenyboppers. His dreambabygirl is the luckless “Donna Keppel,” who at the first blooming of passionate amour in the mind’s heart of Richard Fenton is hardly more than 14 years old. Is Richard Fenton a creep? :Let’s just say that he’s NOT QUITE RIGHT. Still, his interest in young girls is not an isolated matter. Jerry Lee “Killer” Lewis, the well known rock-n-roller, married his fourteen-year-old cousin in Memphis, causing quite a stir at the time. Later, Roman Polanski, the film director, got into controversy in regard to romancing a gal of about the same age.
Also, it might further be commented that throughout the Islamic world and Asia, the very young female is prized. The West Europeans until rather recently took early betrothals–even and adult to a child–in stride, as not anything to “get hung up about.” It seems that white “middleclassism” more than anything else developed a distaste for courting and marrying young women, including eleven and twelve year olds, by adult males (including late teens). However, the era of arranged marriages certainly played an important role in the development of such romantic relationships. Also, age criteria that developed in Anglo-Saxon Law, especially in America, tended toward the development of “lawful age” barriers. With the legal advance of sexual equality, there necessarily developed equality of “age barriers” between the sexes, which were ramparts even against the argument of “mutual consent.”
It is this “forbidden” relationship, portrayed only recently by the media in regard to the Texas branch of Mormonism, where they “authorities” in Texas and in the media focused repeatedly on “older men being married to one, or more, young girls,” and similar wording that lets the “cat out of the bag” that we are dealing with the religion of “middleclassism,” pretending to be Christians. Until recently the old wisdom, “Old enough to bleed, old enough to butcher,” prevailed.
Returning to the movie at hand, the moviegoer rather quickly–but not too quickly–is introduced to the “horror” element in Prom Night. This is done by means of a prologue to the body of the story. In this beginning element the viewer notes a car being driven. It includes an adult female driver and two youngsters. The car pulls to the curb in this residential area. Inside laughing and chatting are Donna Keppel (Brittany Snow) and “Lisa Hines” (Dana Davis). After a little chitchat and a “catty” remark about the school rich-girl, “Crissy Lynn” (Brianne Davis) and a primary female competitor, running another femme clique at school, Donna exits the vehicle and goes into her quiet, dim home. The camera angle as she is shown entering her house also crosses and outstretched arm of, apparently, a grown man, which is resting on the floor. Bingo! The moviegoer KNOWS that danger is “just around the corner.”
Indeed! Donna goes up to her bedroom on the second floor and nearly trips over a toy belonging to her little brother. She grabs it and goes for her brother’s bedroom to chastise him. She sees him belly down on the bed. She tries to get his attention. No reaction. She pulls his shoulder, exposing his cut throat. Blood! She reels back. As she heads out of the room, she hears voices: her Mom’s and a strange man’s. She hastens fearfully to her bedroom and hides under the bed! Soon, her Mom has been dragged into the room by some threatening man, mumbling words like “no one can come between our love.” Donna, to her horror, sees her Mom thrown down on the floor right next to the bed. Their eyes meet, even as the man is demanding to know where Donna is. Mom, to protect her daughter, says nothing, even as he stabs her to death.
Folks, this is a compelling opening. And it was only a dream. Yet, it actually happened to Donna Keppel in this film, whose title recalls another Prom Night (1981), starring Jamie Lee Curtis.
The story summary with commentary: After a homicidal maniac with delusions of an ardent, shared love devastates a family, he is locked up in an institute for the criminally insane. The lone survivor, Donna Keppel, goes to live with her Aunt and Uncle, a sympathetic duo. Still, the horror lives on in dreams that plague Donna. She receives therapy and aid in restructuring her life. The high school prom is only a few days away. The moviegoer is treated to the teens in Donna’s “set,” chatting and putting together their prom night “battle gear.” They each have boyfriends, who add their own exuberance to that of the gals. It looks to be “high old times” at the prom, especially after Crissy Lynn engages a very swank L.A. hotel for the “hoe-down.” The lads, hope brimming, rent a suite at the hotel for prom night. Meanwhile, “Detective Nash” (James Ransome) and his right hand man, “Detective Winn” (Idris Elba, who looks sort of like a skinny Eugene Levy), learn that Richard Fenton has escaped from the institute a couple or so days back. Det. Nash is upset. “Why wasn’t I told!” (He had worked on the original Keppel family massacre). He knew how dangerous Fenton was and how his obsession with Donna Keppel still existed. Part of his problem may have been the John Hinckley Syndrome. He goes to warn the Aunt and Uncle. They believe that Fenton couldn’t possibly have traversed the country to get to L.A. They tell Det. Nash that they believe that Donna should be allowed to go to the prom as scheduled. Folks, you knew it had to happen: come prom night, they all checked in together. The moviegoer spies the odd-looking man with the baseball-style hat and pale, institutionally-confined complexion. He loiters about at the front desk, posing as another man. When he sees Donna, her crowd, and their boyfriends, jealousy is aroused. He hangs about the front desk, as one of the boyfriends takes possession of the keys to room number 312. Then Fenton tells the desk clerk that he’d like a room on the third floor. This he receives. After checking out the room, the kids “get down” at the prom hop, chaperoned by Ms. Waters, played engagingly by Mary Mara. Meanwhile, Richard Fenton, fidgeting with his key at his room, sees a maid and asks to be let in. When she helps him with her master key, he stabs her to death with his knife, taking the master key for himself. He uses it to check out room 312, belonging to his “love,” Donna. Fenton is a stalking fool for Donna, so even putsching about her suite is a “foreplay-like” experience for him. Meanwhile, Dets. Nash and Winn are at the hotel, discreetly hanging about in the parking lot. They discover the car of the man whose car was thought to have been “shanghaied” by Richard Fenton some 3000 mile away. They open the trunk and find a body. [You expected dirty laundry?] “He’s here!” shouts Det. Nash. After ordering Winn to go at once to the Aunt-n-Uncle’s house to protect it, Nash and a couple of men proceed to the desk clerk. Nash presents a photograph taken of Fenton shortly after the original murders. He has a Charley Mansonesque look with his hair long and bearded. However, the moviegoer has already seen that he is now clean-shaven. When shown the “furry” version of Fenton, the desk clerk doesn’t recognize Fenton as being a man who has come to this hotel–even though we have witnessed him checking into the hotel within the last couple of hours. And why did not Det. Nash bring in a sketch, at least, of a “clean-shaven Fenton” on the off-chance that he was clean-shaven. Why didn’t Det. Nash ask the “institute” at which Fenton had been confined to fax a recent photograph? Folks, don’t ask–sound reasoning is not the object of this film. Fenton–being Fenton–the body count starts going up. Donna’s crowd begins to join the “city of the doomed,” as one by one they find a pretext to go to suite #312. When Nash finds bodies of hotel employees here and there, he declares: “He’s here! Evacuate everyone!” Alas, they don’t find Fenton (he’s schlepping over to Auntie’s). Donna and her boyfriend, “Bobby” (Scott Porter), are taken by authorized vehicle to Auntie’s, as Det. Nash has given the “green light” to his staying with Donna. Good for her, at any rate. Det. Winn hasn’t noticed anything amiss about the house he’s guarding. Nash is on the way because–because–where else would nutburger Fenton go? After some ups-n-downs, Donna notices a guardian cop sprawled on the ground, her boyfriend turns up dead on the bed, and now Richard Fenton is coming at her, mumbling about “their love.” Just at the nick-of-time, Det. Nash comes “blazing trails” with his Glock, but stalker-maniac Fenton is hard to “terminate with extreme prejudice.” If there is a sequel to this film, look for a resurrected Fenton to intrude once more into Donna’s life, mumbling that “nothing can come between our love.”
Although this film isn’t too remakable, I thought that Dana Davis, who played Lisa Hines, was the “life of the party.”
All rights reserved. Gobigfoot, 2008.
