If jungles, unspeakable monstrosities and places in the middle of nowhere are regular components of your nightmares, search no longer: this is the horror book you want to read. And even if they’re not, like in my case, you can still appreciate a few things in this novel. Some of them you get straight from the book cover’s short summary: Trapped in the Mexican jungle, a group of friends stumble upon a creeping horror unlike anything they could ever imagine.Two young couples are on a lazy Mexican vacation–sun-drenched days, drunken nights, making friends with fellow tourists. When the brother of one of those friends disappears, they decide to venture into the jungle to look for him. What started out as a fun day-trip slowly spirals into a nightmare when they find an ancient ruins site . . . and the terrifying presence that lurks there.
Given its suitable plot, a movie adaptation with the same title has been released soon after its publication in 2006. With a reason: The Ruins takes you effortless to the jungle together with its hapless characters, over which a sense of a tragedy waiting to happen looms since the beginning. I liked the pace of the narration and the way horror unfolds, from a direction you wouldn’t expect and that only gets worse as you understand it in all its implications.
The novel (and the movie, for what that matters) got mixed reviews. The New York Times blamed its special kind of horror (which I won’t describe here in order to avoid spoilers) of “dragging the story down into the realm of the stupidly ridiculous“. I certainly agree that some characteristics might have been ill-conceived: Smith went for the overkill, which is often not a good choice. But once you admit the possibility of existence of it in the first place, these characteristics are still reasonable, and not at all ludicrous. Have you found ridiculous the xenomorphs in Aliens (the sequel by James Cameron) when they cut the electric power to Ripley & Co, based on the fact they were not supposed to show intelligence? I didn’t, and this is a rather similar case.
I would instead complain about other aspects – especially two: one, you get no clue about where this horror comes from, not even a theory, just a couple of pages quite late in the book. And considering it is the absolute protagonist, that’s not only frustrating, but looks like a lost opportunity. Second, and more worryingly, the characters in this novels – especially women – are more stereotypes than real people: they acquire some depth only towards the end, i.e. too late for them, and certainly for most of the readers.
Said that, and with all these caveats, I would still recommend The Ruins. What I found especially disquieting it’s the underlying morale of the story, which has been well resumed in this review on Slate.com: “Passivity is the enemy. ‘They were waiting with no apparent emotion at all,” Smith writes in a nice passage, “as one might sit over the course of an evening, watching a candle methodically burn itself into darkness, never less than certain of the outcome, confident that the only thing standing between now and the end of waiting was time itself’.” You can find it demoralising, sure, and it makes for a gloomy reading especially in the last chapters. But in this also lies its cliche-breaking horror tale, which I have appreciated, and most of its quality.
A warning: well written as it might be, it gets gory as it progresses. If graphical depiction of blood and wounds make you sick, you may want to avoid it altogether.
I loved this book, although you are completely correct about the stereotypical characters. But it did what it was supposed to: it scared the sh*t out of me!
You’re so right – it’s that scary. I’m going to watch the movie too.