The Ruins (novel)

The Ruins is a 2006 horror novel by American author Scott Smith, set on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. The book fits specifically into the survival horror genre, which is marked by people doing whatever it takes to conquer their environment and stay alive. The novel was released on July 18, 2006 (Template:ISBN).

A film adaptation of the novel was released in the United States and Canada on April 4, 2008.

Plot summary

A group of friends and strangers experience supernatural events while visiting ancient ruins near a Mayan village.

Publication history

According to an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the book started as a trial run after a period when the novelist had concentrated on writing the screenplay for A Simple Plan. "It went in stops and starts," Smith told journalist Regis Behe. "I would give up on it, thinking it wouldn't work...With The Ruins I really just started writing. I had a general sense of the story. I knew how I wanted it to end, but all the steps to get there... I just wrote it. I didn't plan it, and, obviously, that had major repercussions that carried through the story." Smith added that he never traveled to Mexico, where the book is set; he merely read a few travel books and did some Internet research.

Critical reception

Entertainment Weekly reviewer Gillian Flynn gave The Ruins an A−, calling it "Thomas Harris meets Poe in a decidedly timely story," continuing, "Smith has tapped into our anxieties about global warming, lethal weather, supergerms—our collective fear that nature is finally fighting back—and given us a decidedly organic nightmare."

Michiko Kakutani, writing for The New York Times, said, "As in his debut novel, A Simple Plan (Knopf, 1993), Mr. Smith is concerned with what happens to a group of ordinary people when they are suddenly placed in a decidedly extraordinary situation. In that earlier book, evil turns out to be something that lurks deep within his heroes' greedy hearts. In The Ruins, evil is something randomly stumbled upon in the jungle." Kakutani was unimpressed, comparing the novel unfavorably with Little Shop of Horrors and saying, "The Ruins, however, isn't a comedy or a musical. It seems meant to be a straight-ahead thriller, with some bloody set pieces lifted from the horror genre thrown in for extra chills: you know, grisly, up-close shots of people having their legs chewed up or being choked to death by demonic forces. Whatever humor is produced by the story's Cruel Talking Plants appears to be entirely inadvertent."

In Salon, Laura Miller warned, "Don't start this book if you're especially weak of stomach or nerves, and above all don't pick it up if you're not willing to tolerate some deviation from the usual conventions of thrillers and horror stories. Not everything will be explained to you, and not everything will turn out in the tidy, reassuring ways to which we've all become accustomed. The Ruins is like all great genre fiction in its irresistible storytelling momentum, but in its lack of mercy, it's more like real life."

Reviewer Tony Buchsbaum found himself "blown away by the author's crisp, clearly-focused way with a scene. He paints each one like a great artist, yet also holds back, sharing only the bits and pieces of detail that you need to make the scene your own." He adds,

Stephen King made the comment in a column for Entertainment Weekly, writing, "The Book of the Summer: That would be The Ruins, by Scott Smith, last heard from in 1993 (A Simple Plan, later filmed by Sam Raimi from Smith's script). No quietly building, Ruth Rendell-style suspense here; Smith intends to scare the bejabbers out of you, and succeeds. There are no chapters and no cutaways—The Ruins is your basic long scream of horror. It does for Mexican vacations what Jaws did for New England beaches in 1975."

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review said that the novel "is, superficially, the perfect summertime beach read. Between the lines of The Ruins, however, is a dark, sometimes scathing, social commentary." The reviewer added that it "has a strange duality in that it directly pays homage to Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, and indirectly to The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. The story of four young Americans caught in a deadly situation on a trip to Mayan ruins in Mexico, it builds a tension that Serling excelled at, created from knowing that a situation is spinning out of control in ways beyond the characters' comprehension."