Paramount+ subscribers have the chance to rediscover a 2000s horror gem they probably missed. The streaming platform has a pretty deep horror catalog that features titles like A Quiet Place and Scary Movie. As horror fans await the streaming debut of Scream 7 on the platform, which hasn’t yet been announced, they can now stream a criminally underrated horror movie from the aughts.
The underrated eco-horror film The Ruins joined Paramount+ on March 1st, and it’s a horror movie definitely worth revisiting. The movie was directed by Carter Smith in his feature film directorial debut and based on Scott B. Smith’s 2006 novel of the same name. It centers around a group of American tourists in Mexico whose vacation turns into a fight for survival when they are lured to a remote, unmapped Mayan temple and trapped by hostile locals and hunted by man-eating, parasitic vines. The movie was neither a commercial nor critical success and largely missed out on “best of the decade” discussions, but it’s a genuinely unique and terrifying take on the creature feature genre.
The Ruins Delivers Terrifying Botanical Horror
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The Ruins isn’t your typical creature feature. There’s no towering lizard monster smashing buildings or ravenous shadowy figures lurking just beneath the surface of the water. Instead of a rampaging beast, the threat is an intelligent, fast-growing, carnivorous plant that can mimic sounds – and it’s absolutely terrifying. Rather than a more traditional monster movie, The Ruins plays out like a slow-burn survival horror that gets under the skin, literally. Focusing the horror on a sentient, man-eating vine that lures its victims in transformed the movie into a tense study of isolation, paranoia, and survival. The characters being trapped by the villagers who won’t let them leave builds a relentless sense of claustrophobia. And the burrowing nature of the vines, which trap characters in intense scenes of self-mutilation and desperation, results in some pretty gnarly body horror elements.
Beyond its great premise and body horror execution, the movie breaks convention as a daylight horror, staging its intense story almost entirely in bright, relentless, and unforgiving daylight. The movie strips away the safety of darkness, giving the characters no place to hide and transforming a beautiful, sunny vacation into absolute vacation nightmare fuel. The Ruins also does a pretty great job of presenting characters you can root for by having the protagonists make logical, realistic choices, creating a hopeless, realistic scenario where even smart decisions lead to a horrifying, desperate end.
What’s New on Paramount+?
The Ruins joined Paramount+ on March 1st alongside dozens of other great films. On the horror front, Paramount+ subscribers can now stream everything from Crawl to most of the Friday the 13th franchise, as well as both the 1989 and 2019 versions of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary and the sequel Pet Sematary II. Outside of horror, other streaming options include 21 Jump Street, Good Will Hunting, and The Banshees of Inisherin.
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