My roommate vehemently insisted that I read Scott Smith's novel, The Ruins, mostly due to our inescapable real-life similarities to the novel's plot: We are friends! Who also went to Mexico! And we visited ruins, too! OMG! Luckily, the rest of our vacation did not involve angry Mayans, amputation, and flesh-eating plant-life (for the most part).
In the movie based on the novel, we meet best friends Amy (Jena Malone) and Stacy (Laura Ramsey), who are on vacation with their boyfriends Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) and Eric (Shawn Ashmore), in Cancun, Mexico. Amy seems a little absent-minded and drinks too much, practically throwing herself at the group's new German friend Mathias (Joe Anderson) after her boyfriend Jeff goes to bed one night. Unfortunately, we learn very little about the rest of the characters, whereas the book spends a few hundred pages getting us acclimated.
