About halfway through Scott Smith's second novel The Ruins the band of young, attractive people trapped on the hill talk about what would happen if their current situation were made into a movie (more on the film adaptation in a bit). It's an interesting scene, because reading novels like this, especially with the knowledge that it will eventually be turned into a film, you begin to work out the seemingly inevitable plot mechanics for yourself. Who will live, who will die, how they'll die...it's an automatic reaction to some books. Smith knows this, and one of the delights of The Ruins is how it makes every attempt to subvert the reader's expectations. This is only Smith's second book (after 1994's A Simple Plan, also made into a movie), a straight up horror yarn that takes a fairly generic premise (young, beautiful college kids go off on vacation and run into something horrible) that at first glance seems like a carbon copy of conventional films like I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and FINAL DESTINATION and throws a number of wrenches into the works, managing to provide some genuine scares and freaky moments as it simultaneously subverts the normal expectations that a lot of horror - both film and print - offer.
Four friends vacationing in Mexico meet up with a young German tourist whose brother has disappeared, supposedly going into the jungle to join a young woman on an archaeological dig at some ruins. Deciding to make an outing of it, they travel into the jungle to pick the brother up. They arrive at the base of an enormous, overgrown hill, from which they can see the ruins at the top. However, the hill is mysteriously guarded by armed villagers intent on not letting anyone up the hill. That is, until one of the girls stumbles and actually takes a single step on the hill and everyone goes bat-shit, forcing the kids to go up the hill and stay there - no explanation, just guns and arrows to serve as a deterrent for coming off the hill.
Taken on its own, the scene at the base of the hill is a horribly tense and frightening moment, but what they find on the hill, in the ruins themselves, provides more than enough reason for the villagers fear. Cell phones and voices echo in the air, there's no sign of the brother or the archaeologists...no sign of any living thing. Just the overgrowth of vines, that never seem to be completely still...
And that's all just set-up for the main section of the book, which deals what happens in the ruins. There's plenty of nasty images and scenes to keep gore hounds at bay, but the real terror comes from the dynamics of the group. As food and water slowly dwindle, and the horror of the vines is understood for what it truly is, the insecurities of the group begin to tear everyone apart. Accusations and petty jealousies get the better of people, and the true moments of devastation come not from the supernatural elements, but from the desperate actions and shameful motivations of the "heroes," and it those moments of rage and deception and greed that make The Ruins such a blast to read. Smith uses the great set-up of forecasting who will die and when and then completely turns it on its head.
This book was the very definition of a "page turner" for me. One of the best horror novels I've read in years. Only one caveat to reading it, however, and this is where the movie comes in. The film THE RUINS hews pretty closely to the novel (it was adapted by Smith, using the clever alias Scott C. Smith). Most of what occurs there occurs in the book, albeit with some subtle changes. So if you've already seen the movie I don't know how the book will work for you - a lot of the shock and surprise would be taken out. However, if you haven't seen the movie, by all means GO OUT AND READ THIS BOOK! It's fantastically creepy and you can then watch the film and appreciate it for what it is.
