The Ruins - A competent little horror flick

It's amazing that there are any teenagers left in America. Every time they seem to venture more than five miles out of their home town they seem to get picked off by Rednecks/Werewolves/the Undead, or serial killers (take your pick).

In 'The Ruins,' we see your average bunch of plucky American teens (i.e. far too good looking to be believable) taking a well-earned holiday (sorry, 'vacation') to Mexico. All goes well until someone suggests venturing off the beaten paths to look at some... you guessed it, ruins.

And, before you can say `teen horror' our poor, hapless heroes are knee deep in (of all things) killer plants! Hardly the most fearsome foe, but it certainly does its best to play its part in decreasing the population of an American High School.  And, to make matters worse, our young models are not just stranded on top of some old ruins, surrounded by the feral fungi, but they also manage to annoy so locals to the point that the Mexicans vow to shoot them all dead if they should try and make a break for it.

The cast is... er, young.  In fact, unless I'm mistaken, none of them has done an awful lot of A-list stuff since this film (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!).  They're your typical bunch of good looking horror film 'fodder' and play their parts well enough.  No Oscars are going to come their way for this one, but I'm sure you would guess as much as this is a horror film and not a period drama.

All in all, it's a lot of silly fun - as is most mainstream horror these days. There's some nice gory scenes and it's not too 'CGI effects' heavy, although plenty of things that happen even though any sane person wouldn't so that. But it's horror, right? So we're happy to suspend our disbelief.  Plus there's an ever so subtle poke at just what exactly kids these days will do to get hold of a mobile phone (and 'The Ruins' was made long before Twitter or selfies took off!).

Give it a go - it's very watchable, plus, if these kids ever make it back to civilisation, they will get a guaranteed A+ for any `What I did in my holiday' essay.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that