I just finished reading The Ruins, and after seeing the trailer for the movie , it looks like they might have taken some liberties (shock horror) with the story. Any fans of the book want to speculate about the movie? Since this is largely a discussion of the book, I want to keep spoilers open, which of course may spoil the movie as well.
spoiler buffer zone *
OK, so the big thing I noticed was that it appears they have made Stacy a more active character. She and Amy get chased by vines in the mine shaft instead of Jeff and Amy. She is the one who has the vines under her skin instead of Eric. Since Eric’s peril was one of the more horrifying parts of the book, it makes me wonder what Eric has left to do. And it looks like “Pablo” gets injured by being shot rather than falling down the mine shaft.
Also it seems likely they will escape, or at least have a real escape attempt. There is a brief shot of what looks like Amy running in the jungle.
And I wonder if they will duplicate the “who would play you in the movie?” discussion from the book. That would be, like, sooooo meta.
Well, I read it and hated the book. I mean total full on hate. I had previously read ‘A Simple Plan’ by Smith and didn’t like it either but I figured I’d give him a second chance. Bad idea, I hated this book as much as I hated A Simple Plan.
I usually like horror (my favorite authors are King and Straub) but this booked sucked. I don’t think I’ll be seeing the movie.
I haven’t read the book but when I saw the trailer and the first words out of the character’s mouths were essentially “Hey, let’s go to remote spooky spot!” I knew that the film was doomed.
Interesting. Why did you hate it? I’m just curious. I don’t read a lot of horror (though I do like King) and I was engrossed. I think I liked it for reasons that a lot of people probably don’t - all the characters were unlikeable and that it is so relentlessly bleak. IRT the movie, I suspect they won’t be true to its bleakness and instead it will be just another schlocky horror pic.
I never read A Simple Plan but loved the movie, so I guess there’s something about Smith’s work that appeals to me.
I liked the setup of the book, but it just got more and more outlandish as it went on. By the end, I was praying for those whiny-ass kids to die already.
I adored A Simple Plan. It’s one of my favorite books. I read The Ruins when it came out and I did enjoy it, but really felt no urge to recommend it to people or ever read it again. It was clear pretty early on that the only question to be answered was, what order will they die in?
I really could not get into this book. I tried to read it on the recommendation of someone of this board, but it didn’t grab me, and didn’t really pull me in…Scary vines? Okaay…
And on another note - is this guy (the author) obsessed with people peeing or what? In the first 50 pages there are like 3 descriptions of peeing…weird!
Not just scary vines, Carnivorous Plant! Carnivorous Plant, I tell you!
I didn’t think it was scary, as such, but I really liked the “what order do they die in?” aspect of it. There was really NO hope at all. I would have been disappointed if, they somehow escaped or got rescued (which I worry may happen in the movie). I like the concept where you put well-thought (if not terribly likeable) characters into an impossible situation, and see how long and in what manner they manage to last. I loved that they started out talking about how they needed to think about lasting for weeks and weeks and rationing their food, and they ended up all expiring within a few days, well before their food ran out. So the last one left gobbles it all, then forgets to do one thing that could actually help the next batch of doomed visitors until it’s too late for her to do so.
It’s totally cheesy, but I found the concept really fun (Carnivorous Plant!) and the ticking off of the deaths harmlessly sadistic.
I just finished the book last night, and liked it a lot! Harrowing is a word I would use to describe it. It certainly kept my nerves on edge.
I’m really afraid they’ll fuck up the movie bad, though.
I do wonder if the movie will go further towards explaining what the vines actually are (alien life forms? nuclear accidents?), I hope not. I prefer the “this is the way the situation is” set-up. I would like to see them clarify what part the Mayans play in all this. Is there some sort of. . .compact or something. . .between them and the vines?
My one complaint is that I felt like the author tried to shoehorn in too much back story on the Americans.
I picked up the book because when I saw the trailer I thought “Ok, this movie looks bad but I heard the book is good so I had better read it before this comes out.” And while reading the book, discovered that it’s pretty much un-filmable as it is. I mean, it’s a lot of sitting and bickering, then turning around and finding one of your friends has been eaten by a plant. (hee!)
And while I enjoyed the tick-them-off-one-by-one nature of the story, I think this is the thing that would be unpleasant to see in a film. It would become more like the oh-so in vogue “torture porn” type of thing (which is the main reason why I think they are giving Eric’s malady to the “slut”, Stacy). In other words, reading about horrible, if implausible, suffering is much less squicky than seeing it depicted on film.
My husband loves horror books but really didn’t like this one. His complaints have already been covered here - zero hints about what was up with the vines/ruins/mines, absolutely no positive outcomes at all (even the last one to die figures out that her efforts to warn others are for naught), unlikeable characters.
We both saw the film adaptation of A Simple Plan and liked the film… for one viewing. Haven’t seen it since because it was so goddamned depressing. As the credits rolled, I said to my husband something to the effect of, “If we ever find a ton of money like that, we are leaving right away and pleading ignorance if questioned.” He heartily agreed.
I’m not sure if I enjoyed the book or not, or if “enjoy” is even the right word. To me, the vines were a maguffin, so the nature of them and why they were there were more or less irrelevant. My take is that the author wanted to place four disparate personalities ( the Boy Scout, the Air Head, and so on) in the most stressful environment he could imagine, with no possibility of escape, just see how each reacted with the other. He poured the reagents into the test tube, stirred, then sat back to see what happened. In that sense, I admired the book more than I liked it. He offered no easy outs or stereotypical behavior.
A Simple Plan seemed to be kind of the same thing: Let’s put these two personalties in an extreme situation to see what happens.
