In the car on the way to see The Ruins, my friend and I were
talking about trash. “I watched two movies today,” he said,
“Blues Brothers 2000 and that Coast Guard movie with Kevin
Costner and Ashton Kutcher.” He sighed. “I checked The Painted
Veil out from Netflix, but after the first 10 minutes I just…
couldn’t.”
I confessed that last week I sent Dr. Strangelove back to the
‘Flix, unwatched, after it had gathered dust on top of my TV for three
months. Within that three-month period, I managed to make time for
Herbie: Fully Loaded, High School Musicals 1 and 2, the
seminal Charlie Sheen rom-com Good Advice (heard of it? LIAR),
many reruns of Law & Order in which I already knew that the
piano teacher or the venture capitalist or the Martha Plimpton dun it,
and a marathon of Escape to Chimp Eden. Another
friend—a friend who studies film theory, even—recently told
me that she did the exact same thing with Seven Samurai. Sent it
back after a few months. Ordered that weird live-action Peter
Pan instead.
A couple of days ago, Chinatown arrived in the mail. It sat
on top of my dusty TV while I drove toward The Ruins.
Is it possible to spoil something that is already rotten? Can the
secrets of a moldy turd really be termed “spoilers?” Because The
Ruins is already the stinkiest stink-stank that ever stonked, and I
want to tell you everything about it. Some stupid bitches and their
boyfriends go to Mexico to bitch around, bitchily. They wind up at this
ancient Mayan ruin, where a village of dirt-covered jungle people who
don’t speak English OR SPANISH yell at them in jungle-ese and herd them
up to the top of the pyramid and won’t let them come down.
(Attention, white people: Do not go to Mexico! Mexicans are
scary and will shoot you with arrows!)
So it turns out that an EVIL MEXICAN PLANT VINE grows on the ruins
and eats turistas for its almuerzo! The jungle people
guard the ruins and salt the soil so that the evil vine doesn’t escape
and eat the entire earth. (Okay, but guess what, Guillermo del Jungle?
The vine doesn’t care about the salty soil! It’s a VINE! That is the
entire point of a vine. Also, I know you’re a two-dimensional
racist caricature, but if you’re so worried about keeping people off
the ruins, couldn’t you think about LEARNING SPANISH and then maybe PUT
UP A SIGN!?) Oh, and also the plant can fucking TALK.
The rest of the movie is basically a documentary about DIY surgery.
Abdominal Gouging for Dummies. A ruinous ruination of my
Sunday.
I’m not sure why I prioritize satisfying trash over actual movies,
but it has something to do with laziness, and with living alone. The
Ruins occupies the worst possible spot on that movie
continuum: unsatisfying trash. I drove home, unsatisfied,
where I did anything but watch Chinatown. 
