Reader comments
Film review: 'Ruins' gets lost in the jungle

I was so disappointed in this movie. The novel was well-crafted, fairly suspenseful, and made the reader feel the panic, hunger, thirst, and heat stress that the characters were enduring. The movie made it appear that these characters only had to endure about 12 hours of torture. To say that this movie did not translate well is an understatement, and all the changes that were made from the book were unnecessary. Then, just as I thought it couldn't get any worse, the ending destroyed what little this movie had going for it.

I adored the book and found the movie disappointing as well, for many of the reasons the above commentor listed. The book gave a viseral feel of utter hoplessness -- thirst until it rained, absolute hunger as they counted out how many grapes each person could have, them taking shifts as they waited in darkness and sun at the bottom in the hopes the Greeks would come. Eric (now Stacey) losing his will to live as he realized no matter how much he cut the vine was still growing inside him.

The lack of the characters being "worn down" was a major issue. You simply didn't feel their pain. And while I love flawed characters -- Amy (Jena Malone) being the somewhat untrustworthy girlfriend, but even that was reduced to a simple accusation later and not delved into.

The cast did what they could. Perhaps the real crime is trying to boil down a 400 page book into a 90 minute film.