167. Book to Film - The Ruins

We're in. We meet you, they may offer you, say love the money an instance I play, but whatever they offer a domes. They may offer you out some cheap brills, fancy candles and beverly whatever they are from the dance. My time to see right coming from you, lying off for you here something's Welcome to another episode of the Femine Critique. I'm Emily and I'm Christine, And on today's episode, we're doing something we have not officially done before.

We've talked about doing this as an exercise of doing a taking a close look at a film and the book it was adapted from, and we have certainly talked about that in detail because I think both you and I are big readers and big movie people obviously, and enjoy the act of comparing and contrasting and pulling things from one and the other and all of that. And so what is the property in question that we are doing that with today, Well, we're going to be talking about the two thousand and six novel two thousand and eight movie The Ruins the Winds, which is a two syllable word. I don't know if you were aware ruins ruins. So I'm I'm all you says, okay, So I'm from Long Island, and Long Island obviously has a lot of accent, details of which you have no doubt heard, but one of the I do not have a strong Long Island accent at all.

I can you know, when I get drunk, angry or tired, it comes out. But in general, like I actually you know, have worked over the last forty years, just would have called that of it. But one thing that I didn't ever realize, and I don't know if this is Long Island or if this was just like my family. One day I must have been talking about oh, I think I was saying, using the word r u I n as a verb. I said, you know, oh, I don't like to wear you know, I don't like to drink fruit prunch because it always ruins my clothes.

And my husband, like, who's from Kentucky. It looked at me, He's like it what it? What? What's your clothes? Like?

It it ruins? It's like, oh, it ruins, Yeah, it ruins. Why are you? Why what is going on here? And that's when I learned about diphthongs.

Diphthongs or when you have a word that has two two distinct vowel sounds together. So poem, museum, ruin. Uh, those are I guess supposed to be pronounced as two syllable words. In my entire life, I've I've said museum, I have not said museum, and uh, weirdly enough, when I would use it ruins as a as a noun, when I would talk about them in the historical context and the way they're used in this book, I would say it as two syllables, but when I said it as a verb, I thought it was one. So now I make a point of being extra annoyingly enunciating the two syllables of any diphthong, and it probably I don't know if it makes me sound like an idiot or like I'm really pretentious, but it's been my new armor.

So The Ruins by Scott Smith. Yeah, yeah, indeed, that's very that's very funny. I never noticed that you did that, ever. I guess it's subtle and and and cool. Maybe I thought you sounded cool and like, oh, I thank you.

Really really were setting the standard general like nobody really says poem, but I guess people say poem and not poem, or museum and not museum. So it's I don't know, listen to it now in your daily life and here here how people say it. I'm gonna yeah. So which did you so to go back in time to two thousand and six or two thousand and eight, what was your experience with both of these? Which when did you do first?

When did you do it, when did you revisit it? All that stuff. So I definitely watched the movie first, and the theaters are on Netflix DVD like I did back in the day. Probably rented it or streamed it. I don't remember when I watched it.

I know that the first time I watched it, I was unimpressed, So that'll kind of give you. So it might have been two thousand and nine. Okay, there's there's a there's a switch that gets flipped for me where I become a lot a lot less focused on what I like and more focused on is this a good film? Not? Did I like this film?

So I remember being unimpressed the first time I saw it. I then rewatched it, probably because I'm all four, given stuff another chance, and that was probably within the last five to seven years that I rewatched it, and then I loved it. When I watched it again, I thought, Jesus Christ, this movie is beautifully filmed. It looks stunning. And that's when I looked up Carter Smith and I realized that he had been a photographer and just has such a beautiful eye.

And I thought the character work was I didn't, I guess I didn't notice how how good the character work it was the first time I watched it, and then I fell in love with it, and since that I've watched it probably three or four times. I wrote about it. I wrote an article for dread Central about it. Make sure you hit the link up for that. I will just basically about the thing that affected me the most, I guess is just how completely fucked they are.

And so that was the that was the angle of my article because every time I watch it now there's a point where I go like, don't go. Every time I can't, I can't help it, everything, don't do it. Don't go your moment watching it because having read the book right before it, when they're in the woods and they find they almost got past the path, and I was thinking in my head that thing that you have sometimes when you watch even when you watch a movie, you know and you're like, maybe they'll walk by it this time. Maybe they won't see it. No, obviously will.

It's a ninety minute movie. They have to do it. And that's the angle that I've that I've approached the story with so many times, and that told me like, oh, no, you you are involved with these characters. It has effectively worked on you where you worry on their behalf even though you know what's going to happen. Yes.

So I went to listen to the audiobook probably last year, maybe the year before, narrated by Patrick Wilson, which I will say over and over again, very good. I thought I got about halfway. In hindsight, it was probably a little bit more like seventy five percent. I never finished it. And then because their library took it back, and then I just, I guess, started reading something and then you said, let's read it.

So then I read it from scratch in a book. I didn't listen to it. I read it, which was a different experience. Sure, yeah, this this would be I'm not a big audiobook person. I just don't have that relationship with audiobooks where they don't work for me that way.

But I feel like this on the page is a very particular experience that and even that it's and again, I because I don't do books a lot, but I know a lot of audiobooks where it is multiple perspectives because this is it's third person, but it's I guess third person character amnition. It rotates points of view, and I'm almost surprised that it's not it doesn't rotate four or even two. That you don't have a man and a woman or two men and two women doing the four characters that are narrating it. That's interesting. Yeah, and he does.

He does a fantastic job and it's extremely like compelling, and but there it allows for I think, a level of detachment whereas if you're reading it in and you are giving these characters voices and they're rotating like it's inescapable. You cannot escape when Amy's freaking out, and you cannot get away from Eric, and it's very like, it's very immersive. So I think, obviously I believe audiobooks are reading like I don't think. I'm not one of those people. Yeah, do not agree, but like I personally found the sitting with the book and reading experience to be more impactful.

Yeah, I probably watched the movie around the same time you did, I know it. I mean, it came out in the theaters at a really interesting time in horror because it was the glut of remakes. It was where, you know, two thousand and eight, every every movie in the theaters is either a like original torture porny movie, or it is a remake of something that's either really brutal or it's a PG thirteen CW pretty people cast movie. And this one probably one of the few that year that was you know. I mean, it's based on a novel, but a completely original property.

It's not a franchise. It never it's it didn't do that well, I think, which is again not surprising because it's not the easiest cell of a movie and never had sequels. I have never heard talks of a remake, but I wouldn't be surprised if at some point it does, and that would be I don't think there's a need to. I don't think there's a need to, you know, find a different angle in the material, because I think this is a really and we'll I mean we'll get to that, we'll talk about the actual adaptation of it. But yeah, I don't see a need to look at this again from a different point of view, but sure I wouldn't be against a remake if somebody has a reason to do it.

At some point I read the book. I remember finding the book because I have this big, clunky hardcover that I definitely got for Oh it's the prices even on there. I got it for a dollar and it used must have been like a used bookstore or like the Strand, it was somewhere. And trying to figure out when I actually read it, because this edition was two thousand and six, so who knows. I would probably say I read it in like twenty ten or so.

It's been a while, and then, you know, a month ago, picked it up again and reread it and it yeah, it's It is such an interesting exercise because Scott Smith, who also did a Simple Plan, which is the other probably big thing he's known for that, he also did the screenplay for The Ruins, and you, I don't know. It's just the closest thing I can think of to it in terms of how those work. Was the movie and book The Girl with All the Gifts, remember the zombie movie close. I have read that book and watched that movie. Yeah, and it's the same.

I believe the author of the novel is also doing the screenplay for that movie, and it's similar. It's similar thing to where it's really close story structure wise, but it's just different things done with characters and with casting in a way that is like one of the I think probably like most ideal situations for a writer to be able to like the reason for adapting their work, right, because it's Okay, here's my work now, but now I'm translating it to a different medium, but I'm still involved in it, so I'm going to keep what I know is really important. But it's also film, so I understand I'm gonna shuffle things. I'm going to condense characters. I'm going to you know, read rework some things in a way that's gonna do something different on screen than it does in the book.

And I mean both I think work really well in that regard. So how so you enjoyed I mean, obviously you enjoyed both the experience of reading it and watching it. It sounds like this go around. Oh yeah, absolutely rewatched it like a couple of days ago, and it I there are certain shots that I will just like this at this point, my husband and I have both seen it multiple times, so I'm talking through it right. So there are a couple of shots where I'll just fully be like, oh my god, oh my god.

He knows what he's doing. Yeah, yeah, ah, what is her? Carter Smith knows it constantly, constantly, and that it's it's Them against the Sky is just so striking and and and it's I mean, what's really wonderful is that when you've seen the movie multiple times and then you sit and read the book, like really immersed in it, you can he translates what's there so beautifully, Like the descriptions of like the in the well, the little hole with their faces peeking over it is written so so viscerally, and you've really feel it. And then and then that's how he films it, and it's like, yeah, that's what I pictured there. It is.

Yeah, it's a very cinematic novel like you and I mean again, Scott Smith had been more a screenwriter than a novelist. And even when he I like pulled a quote he had talked about writing it, and his quote was I stumbled into it. It had been a long time since I'd attempted a novel and I began The Ruins more as an exercise than anything else. I thought I would simply start writing and see where it went. I didn't have much of an outline or much of a sense of the characters.

I wasn't even certain if I'd pursue it very far. And it's funny because reading it, like, one of the things that I think is interesting to it as a novel is that there are no chapters. It is just like it starts. And for me, especially like as somebody who's normally reads on the kindle, or not normally but like often reads on the kindle, I'm so used now to like knowing when a chapter ends, just because it says it in my kindle, And it's easy then for me to say, like, okay, good, I'll read one more chapter and then go to sleep. And the Ruins like, no, there there's nothing like there's breaks, two new character points of view, but it is just one long like it's this day we go out to the Ruins and now it's eventually over.

And by the way, if we hadn't said it, like, we're going to spoil both the book and movies. So if you haven't done either, please do both, because we're going to talk in detail about things. Yes, the I guess if if you haven't seen it, Christine, it's still my favorite part of the show. Can you give a plot synopsis of the Ruins? Okay, so this is a broad one for both Okay, so so for American tourists.

Uh make friends with some other tourists from other countries Germany and Greece, respectively, and decide to go to some weird ruins that the German dudes brother had gone to with some broad So they decide to make this trick to these ruins. A bunch of people don't really want to go, but they do it anyways. There really nobody wants to go except it's Matthews and oh it's gonna say Jonavan Tucker, but never Sudenlyy've had Jeff, Jeff, We're gonna have to talk about So in the movie it's a teas I read it as Matthias and yes, right, so I guess I don't know either. I mean Joe and Joe Anderson isn't German, so I feel like we can kind of say anything and be right. I know, I wasn't really sure, but they all go to the Ruins they find the ruins.

They they they get hurted onto these these Aztec Mayan Mayan I believe it Mayan ruins. They get hurted onto them, and uh, the local villagers will not let them leave. And then it's a it's a discovery of what the ruins actually are. Killer plants about it's about killer plants. Plants, And what's funny is I really I didn't really get so they feel very much like plants.

In the movie, it's like, oh, it's a it's a plant. There's a pretty red flower. But reading the book, I really got the sense that it was more animal than anything. Well it's yeah, I mean it is not it like, it is not only a plant. It can talk, it can feel, I feel like, but am I wrong?

I feel like the movie it just lets us sit with like, yeah, it's a vine. It's fine, it's a vine, and we don't. But I in the book, I get the sense of, like, especially when Jeff is observing it, like all the shit that it does, he very much he gets it. Feel like it walks up to the line of straight up saying, oh, this is like a mammal or something. It's very interesting.

I didn't mean to cut you off. It was really struck by by that difference, because maybe it's just me in the way that I was ingesting both of it. But I never get the sense in the movie that it's anything other than like, oh, a bad plant, but like in the book, it's like, oh no, this is like a monster. Yeah. I mean, there's one conversation I can't remember where it falls, when they're talking a little bit about like what is this, And I think it's when they point out of this, like it's kind of when they're they're realizing how doomed they are of we're not getting out of here, gets out of here.

There's a reason why there are no animals, there are no birds, there are no insects on this mountain. The ecosystem has learned that this spot here is cursed and these this has to be here. But you're right, and I think in them because I think a big part of what the movie does really well and smartly is it understands killer vines are a really hard cell. And I think that was probably one of the probably many reasons why this didn't attract a huge immediate audience when it came out, because if you started describing it as like, oh yeah, there's a new horror movie out. Oh what's it called The Ruins?

Oh? Okay, what's it? Uh? Yeah, it's like plants? Oh what like?

And the movie understands that it knows the limits of that. It really does is smart about not over showing them or overusing them. And I think like on the because I listened, I watched it, and I also listened watched it with a momentary. It's Carter Smith and the editor doing the commentary, and they talk a lot about how they like. The main decisions they kept making was do we need to show less of the vines?

Did we show too much of it here? Should we take that shot out? Because I think it really you because there's it's one of those things. It's like we talked about this, My husband and I always talking about decapitations on screen. It is really difficult to show a full decapitation and have it be scary because as soon as you have a head, it's funny.

It is naturally funny to see a head fall off or a head do anything. And I think it's like similar with Okay, but you have killer plants, right, yeah, but they just kind of wind over you. Right, But They're just plants. Like and I think the movie is wise about we can't The plants in themselves visually are not scary. It is everything that is developing why they are so scary.

It is that there is nothing on this mountain that the end. This is something like one big plot thing that happens in the movie that does not happen in the book is that the Mayans, and again we don't really know them. They are not a point of view. They speak a language that they cannot communicate with the Americans, who and the and the Greek and the German. Nobody understands what they're saying, so we never fully know exactly what's going on in their heads.

But it seems pretty clear in the book that like no, they this is they know this. These vines can't get out. They are not just trying to protect themselves. They are trying to do this because they know these vines cannot get out into the world because it would destroy it. But but there's a the biggest like whoa that happened.

There's really two of them, but the one you learned that. I mean, again, the whole reason they're doomed is that they have stepped on the vines. As soon as you touch the vine, you are done. That vine is in you. It is going to get you.

You cannot get it off. You cannot take your skin off, you cannot shower. It's it's got you. Now you are touched. And at one point, it's kind of halfway through the movie where you know the it's I think it's Amy and jaff are down the mountain and they kind of were screaming and they're thinking like maybe we can just run, and Amy flips out and she just picks up the vine and hurls it at the Mayans and it touches a little boy.

It just touches him, It just grazes him. And then immediately, you know, there's some screaming, but very quickly, within ten seconds, they shoot the little boy. And it's like it's it's a it's a heavy thing to do in a movie, and it's not in the book. That does not happen in the in the book, but it is such a clear you know, it is ugly to watch, obviously, but again, they don't linger on it there. I think there's a restraint and how it shone, but it's just one of those things where like right, I don't need to see the plant winding around everybody and taking them down.

That moment of seeing how scared somebody is of the vine is enough to tell you how dangerous they are. Yeah, it's it's a really good shorthand because the book it's not an overly long book by any means, but it's still a novel and this is a ninety minute movie, so there are some things you need to kind of do a shorthand or or cut out or And I think they effectively illustrated the stakes without I mean, because in the book it's over multiple days and it's it's very rapid. In the movie it's like two nights. I think it seems like it. Yeah, like the book, starvation is going to be as big a factor as just you know, being killed by the vines.

Yeah, and I think that that part of it, which I think is smart, because there's a lot in the book about collecting water and rashing food and we don't have time for that in the movie because it's also a shortened timeline. But it all really works. Yeah, and I missed that stuff because I like that. So I actually you would ask me how I wanted to approach it, and I thought maybe we could go character by character and talk about the differences, because that, to me is the most interesting thing. That the characters all do the what they need to do in both the movie and the novel, but they do different things, and I think it's really interesting how certain things were switched or repurposed or changed around all to a very good effect.

Yeah, I agree, I think that is like, yeah, agreed completely. Who do you want to start with? Character wise? I'm all for that. Okay, Well, so can we start with my favorite?

Is it Jeff? It is Jeff? Of course it's my favorite, But in the book, Jeff is my favorite, and the book I really relate to Jeff. He's obviously deeply flawed and stuff, but there's the sense of like this this like almost like burden of leadership, but it's completely understandable, like he doesn't necessarily want to do it, but he kind of does want to do it. Jeff, to me, was the most I don't know that I like liked him.

Like, Jeff was the most interesting character to me on the page. Yeah, he was very complex and messy, but like in an interesting way, because because when you think of like a messy character it's usually that they're like emotionally all over the place, but but he he's quietly messy and his youth kind of sticks out because they're supposed to be very like early early twenty they all graduated, or at least the four Americans are all they have graduated undergrad and they're all heading off to grad school in some form. And he and Jeff in the and in the book it's both Jeff and Amy are going to med school, and the movie it seems like it's only Jeff. Yeah, But again, like, I think there are reasons for that, but Jeff is your Like I recast it a little bit when I read and Jeff for me, even though part of it and there's a reason for it, because I think Jonathan Tucker is to me a little bit sweeter than I would have had Jeff on the page.

On the page, Jeff is a little bit colder. Jeff is, Oh, definitely, he's going to be a doctor. He was an eagle scout. He is clearly the alpha male, has always been the alpha has always assumed he knows the life he's going to have. He is go whether he marries Amy or probably a less complicated woman down the line, who is still a few years younger and attractive.

Like it just it all feels very like, oh yeah, I know Jeff at the type of Jeff, and that's what's so great is then to get this man who is you know it would eventually be kind of a Master of the Universe type guy, but he is in this situation where he even realizes I had everything, I had all the skills to survive, but I can't survive this. All of that meant nothing. And so I had him as like a young Chris Evans. That's not bad. Yeah, yeah, that's solid.

Yeah, just where you get a little bit more of like a blankness to him because I think on screen and this is also a big change in the movie kind of keeps there. The characters on the on the film are It's fascinating how there are no oh simple, she's the good girl, he's the bad boy, like this over that. But they're a little bit and I think this is the nature of a film, and I think you have to do this. They are ultimately a little bit more. You have to sympathize with them, you have to like them.

And Jeff on screen gets to be a hero. He sacrifices himself for any and that is not the case in the book, and I love that. I think it's absolutely fine. Like, sure, a darker movie could have done this differently, but I don't think you could have done that in a way that the audience would feel connected to it at all, for sure, because there's a lot of stuff missing of Jeff and Amy's relationship. And I think the complexity of how Amy and Jeff die in the book as opposed to how Amy and Jeff will die or don't die, and in the movie, it's different because like what happens to Amy and the book is tragic and kind of Jeff's fault, but kind of not so so, Like I almost feel like the movie is a bit of a redemption even though we don't know it.

It's a little kinder to the characters, for sure, and I think that that's warranted, because again, you don't have these days of starvation to push these characters to the edge, and characters fighting over food and hoarding food, which is a big thing in the novel that Amy takes an extra grape and Jeff knows and he doesn't say anything, but he knows, and it's a little it's chilling, it's it's very interesting. So because you lose a lot of like the smaller character stuff or like even even even the points that they keep belaboring around preparation and food in the book, you miss a lot of that. So if Jeff had this overwhelming resentment towards Amy in the movie, you would be like, bro lay off of her exactly like calm down, but like in the book, and not to be like, I don't want this to come off misogynistic, but in the book I couldn't stand Amy, and I thought Jeff was completely justified in all of his feelings about her.

In the movie, I don't, I think that she's just a little whiny and kind of just like I didn't want to come like that's not anything that you like, hate it character. I think it's funny. When I was reading the book, it took me a little bit to get into the characters because I there's maybe like fifty pages in and I wrote a note, I'm like, I don't like anyone, but I also don't think Scott Smith likes any of them. But also I don't think the character any of these characters are like themselves except for maybe Jeff. And that's where I think I realize, like once I had that realization of right, the characters don't like themselves either.

They are all fairly self aware that they are kind of flawed human beings that Amy, you know, will do things and say things and she'll say, oh, like she knows, why did I say that? Why did I keep doing that? And it's complicated because people are complicated. Then if you're you know, I want to read a novel where I don't know fully if I'm not immediately in love with every character on the page, because in real life I don't fall in love with every person I meet on the street. But the problem is, when you were making a movie, you you know, the first thing you know a test.

You know, you do a test audience, and the first thing you ask them is, okay, so did you like the characters? And if you it's the reality. If you hate every character on screen, especially in a horror film, if you are not caring about them when they are going through this hell, then what is the point of watching it? Then you are just enjoying their pain, and this movie is not asking you to enjoy their pain. So I think I appreciate That's such a good point because you said it earlier, and Zach and I were talking about it when we just watched it.

But this did come out very much at a time. Or why wouldn't you assume this was torture porn? Why wouldn't you assume this was just going to terrorize, like a Terista's terrorize these poor, poor college kids, And that might be what I might have gone into it the first time, just with that assumption, so that when people started cutting into their skin and breaking legs, I was like, Okay, this is exactly what I thought it was. Bye bye, but it's not. No.

I know you're right, though, because I think it's easy to watch this movie and be like, maybe even finish it and still think like, yeah, those pretty dumb Americans. But it feels on paper like the exact story and Theresta's came out around the same time is often compared to this, except Theresta's is just kind of stupid. Yeah. I just rewatched it. I think we talked about it.

I don't know how many times I need to see it before it sticks in my head that I just don't like it. Yeah, because it's dumb, Like it really isn't a great story, and the characters have nothing to offer, and they are like, you know, the promiscuous girl is the promiscuous girl. And in this case, even though they are types, if you look at them quickly on paper, Okay, the blonde and yeah, she's naked in the beginning, so we know what she is. And the guy with longer hair, so he's a little doofier. And then there's the brunette, so we know she's gonna be the final girl.

And it like, yes, but absolutely not. And it's it's so and it's not making a point about it, h and it doesn't feel like it's forced, but you like the more you engage it. And I think, especially now this movie being what eighteen seventeen years old and looking at it and realizing like, no, this was actually really progressive writing and characterization that just is so subtle in just how different it is from a lot of what else was coming out at this time. It's it's very true. It's it's very unique.

And I worry that sometimes people do what we just talked about and just write it off, assume there's a couple moments where the effects haven't aged that great. But I would say overall, it does not suffer from its im period, So I think it's still infinitely watchable, and I hope that more people give it a chance, or give it another chance if they if they already saw it. You make a really interesting point about the archetypes, which is something that's present in the book that is missing from the movie, which makes me sad because it's a running thing in the book, especially towards the end where where you know, in the and weaponizes it. Eric says Matthias is not he'll be the Nazi. Right Yet they talk about if they made a movie out of this, and I actually wrote down a line because it's one of the lines that I think it's Eric who says like, well, if they make a movie of this, one of you will be the priss and one will be the slut yep and and also yes, and we need a villain and it's Mattheus.

We're gonna say his name differently every time because he's German, so he's the Nazi. And then yes, the Vine weaponizes that and uses that to tease Matteius in a really interesting way. And then they talk about that on the cameentary of how like look, we try, Like we knew the Vine had to do some mimicking, but we couldn't do it too much because we knew that we didn't know how to do that without it coming across as silly. So for the Vine to call him a Nazi would not have worked. And I completely agree because it works.

Really all that stuff works well in the book, but I can't imagine doing it on screen. And I just think as as very pro slut. I just think it's really funny spoilers that Eric is just and then weaponizes it against Stacy. You'll be the slot. You're the slut.

Yeah, she's been been unfaithful in the book, whereas in the movie it slops and yes it's Amy who's cheated before and who kisses met. In the book, it's firmly Stacy, and so he, you know, weaponizes that you're the slot. You're the slot, and then spoilers Stacey ends up being the final girl, final girl, not in a great way, but like she's the last one standing. So I thought that was a really fun inversion because while the death's kind of they unravel in the movie a little bit more the way that you'd expect them to. At least the order.

But in the in the book, it's very surprising who dies with well, and the pacing of the deaths is really interesting in the book because you go, I don't know, it's probably like it's about a three hundred page book. I think you're like two ten into it when Amy does, like it's far like there is nobody dying, and until you get to that sort of third act and it's Amy, and then it's still a little bit of a weight before it's the next couple of characters. And I actually, something that I think is really effective is that. And again this swaps and we'll get to the characters in a second. But the character who breaks his back in the book that he lives so long, ye I love that, and I almost wish he would like if I would have made one plot change, if I was, you know, editing, I would have said, you know, you know, who actually should be the last one alive and we don't even see him die?

Is the is the Greek or the guy or Matanias, whoever you want to call it, the guy with the broken back? Because there is something I think that is so upsetting about how long the body can go when it is done, and that all of that. This guy should have died immediately, but he didn't. And now he's alive and he's still alive, and he's still alive and there's nothing there. But what do you do?

And I think that's one thing that I'm like, you know, I feel like that's one change I would have, But I'm not an editor, so no, I agree, because I deeply missed that. So in the in the book, the Greek is Pablo. In the movie it's Dmitri. I think probably because they couldn't explain why. Yeah, it just wasn't as much time time, and the Greeks apparently weren't in a draft like initially Scott Smith just omitted the Greeks entirely and didn't think the book needed the movie needed it.

And the reason it wasn't so much to get Pablo in there to get shot early. The reason they I think it was Carter Smith kind of said to Scott Smith, like, no, you need the idea of the Greeks because you need there to be a kernel of hope for the entire film, because the reason they are not completely doomed is that they know we left a map for the other Greeks. They're gonna be here. They're gonna be here. It might be a day, it might be three weeks.

They might fly home and say, wait, Dmitri never came home, let's fly back. But they they know where we are. They're gonna be here. And I think that end also then it gives you, like the final moment of the film, which is there in like every single ending of that. Yes, they do show up and now they're toom too.

But but yeah, so that being one one big switch, and I think again, I'm glad they put that back in. But yes, yeah, I'm I'm very again, very pro the movie. But I do think there's something that that adds to the desperation in the book, being that they don't speak the same language, they don't speak the same way exactly, there's no way to communicate, whereas when it's Matthias in the in the movie who falls to the bottom of the well. Because Dmitri dies before they even get onto the rules. Yeah, Dmitri is shot by the Mayan's right away, which I think is also a smart filmmaking decision because you're trying to get action in there early, because you know you have teenagers watching and they might get bored and so on.

I totally understandable decision. Yeah, but I really because Mattius now can he can tell them like, yes, I can scent to you breaking my left whereas Pablo couldn't he They just so Jeff was very much and Matthias in the book, because that's another thing you lose. In the book, Jeff and Matthias are essentially buddies, like they're they're each other's rocks in this which was which was interesting because Jeff gravitates towards him and not his girlfriend Amy. But in the book it's Jeff and Matthias kind of mostly Jeff deciding what he thinks is best. Yes, and it's it's not like he's I bet there's There is probably a bit of ego to it, but a lot of it is just driven by common sense.

And he's like, Okay, we need to get this guy's legs off because he's gonna get sepsis, set to seemia and die if we leave his legs on. And he just has to convince everybody or bully his way into doing it, whereas in the movie, Matthius can just say like, yeah, do it right, yes, yes, I can say, you're right, and I think that also with Jeff. It's that doctor mental the surgeon mentality, right, the like how surgeons have the god complex and it it's it's disturbing, it is scary and in the movie, like it is upsetting, and yeah, like that's probably the big set piece in a way is the breaking of his legs. But it and there is outcry there, there is everybody realizing, no, he can he's screaming. You said he couldn't feel it.

He can clearly feel it. But in the book it does it's more chilling, and it villainizes Jeff. But Jeff also seems to realize that, huh, okay, maybe I shouldn't have done that. Character wise, I guess you want to move on to Amy, Sure, let's do it. Yeah, So, Amy played by Jena Malone again on the page, is not a character you want to be the final girl.

Let's say she is. And again, like, I hate using these terms about women, but like the book makes it clear. She even acknowledges that that, yeah, she's of a sour puss. She is whiny, she is not enthusiastic. She can be a drag, and that is a really hard thing to put on screen as your even if she wasn't the final girl, which she is in the film.

But just when you put that character out there, it's a tough thing. And I think they do pull back a bit, but she is not. It would be very easy to have made her a very likable sweet oh we don't want anything, Oh, like, yeah, I'm rooting for you to get away, and instead you're not sure if you're rooting for her to get away at the end. But I don't think that's necessarily just the character, that's all. This is the situation.

Yeah, that's definitely. Definitely the circumstances come into play on that. But I do think in the book, yes, I find Amy to be while I understand where she's coming from, I hate all of her choices. Yeah, And in the movie, I don't know that I feel that way. But and again, you don't have the time, and you don't have the deep, inner, inner, inner working stuff so that you can kind of see her rationale because sometimes her rationale doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense.

And and there again the starvation and comes into play, and we don't really get as much of that, Like who are these people now? Kind of stuff like this has truly transformed them in the book to the and not to talk about Stacy again, she's my second favorite, but yeah, agreed, Stacy towards the end of the novel is very much who am I? Is this even me anymore? And yeah, and the movie doesn't deal with that. But for me, that's one of my favorite things that the story does.

I think is that, like I am transformed by this event. If I were to leave this place, who would I even be? Yeah? Crazy, it's crazy, It's so interesting. Yeah, let's move straight to Stacy because again I think they Something else the movie does is it swap them a little bit in different plot things.

And I mean the big thing is the you know which one has cheated on her boyfriend and in the in the book again we said it was Stacy. Stacy's just right there. Like the nickname for Stacey is Spacey that she just seems like a little bit you know who I had her as I always, I know, I always can't remember her first name if it's Ashley or something else, but Hannah from Pretty Little Liars. Oh yeah, right, yeah, because kind of like a little dumb but not but yeah, like you have a conversation with her, and she's you know that not but also is dealing with a lot of stuff. And again her character reassignment in a way between book and movie I think is again a smart decision.

I think it it ends up allowing the movie to say things in regards of how she's used. But in the book, she is the last one standing. She because she is not infected by the vine that is Eric, which we'll get to in a moment, but she everybody else around her has died and she, you know, gets the final chapter to sit there and figure out what's going on and what what it means, and she takes herself to the bottom of the hill. So that and this, like to me, is like the biggest tragedy of it is that she just wants to die there at the bottom of the hill so that her body can be a warning to the Greeks when they show up. So she slits her wrists and then when happens, the vines take her away, and she realizes as it's happening that didn't even matter.

She can't do anything, and it just feels like such a waste of a of youth. I guess the whole thing does right the whole thing. And that's why when they're when they're making the maps, or when they're on the bus, or when they're getting into that that pickup truck just just not right. Kill back, no, no, no, just can't turn around with the beach. Don't.

Don't do it. And there's great there's a big aspect of that in the book, which I think is very understandable, of these exhausted, starving, gross disgusting people being like I just want to take a shower. Yeah, I just want to I just want to eat something. And it's again very relatable and very scary, and how relatable it is because we're all just one awful decision away from being like, well yeah, and as a very pasty white person with sensitive skin, the book does a very good job of talking about how sunburnt they are yea. And there's a there's a great like little thing that happens in the book that just I think it's funny how how impactful it is, which is when they stop at the town first and Stacy, I think by sunglasses and a kid steals them, like a kid just steals them from her and runs away.

Sunglasses are her hat or both and then like throughout the book, she just keeps thinking about that, like she's so hurt by it at first, because I think like they also maybe like cop a feel, so she's just, yeah, she's uncomfortable by it, and just this thing that like you know, happens to a lot of women and we brush it off, but it also sits with you in a weird way. And then so quickly she's like, I would have been would have been easier if I had my sunglasses, if I had my sunglasses, and that kind of thing that just keeps going in there. Uh. And the movie even like I thought it was gonna be a bigger factor because the opening scene when they're at the pool and Jeff points out to Amy, hey, you're getting sunburnt, and I'm like, yeah, You're getting a lot more sunburned over the course of the next ninety minutes.

Yeah, it doesn't. Again, I think because they don't have the time, no compelling we don't have time to for them to deal with those little, little, right, real life things, I guess because we're so busy dealing with like the drama of the movie. And here is the basic difference between books and movies. You just get a lot more of that, like, yeah, atmospheric scene setting stuff in the novel, and you're you can more easily put yourself in that position because yeah, oh I would be really upset too I didn't have X or I would be pissed off if I thought, oh, I should take an extra tube of blah and you know, yeah, very relatable context. Now, the big other switch with Stacy is that plot wise, Stacy and Eric switch.

In the book, Eric is the one who cuts his leg and it cuts his leg and then Stacy jerks him off and that kind of invites the vine into him. And in the movie it is Stacy who gets infected by the vine where the vine is inside of her. She feels it, we see it, she is cutting herself. I think this is brilliant and I think there was a lot of different things going in there. I before I dive into, like my essay on that, what are your thoughts on that switch?

So that's the original way that I know it, obviously because I watched the movie first. I really like in the novel that is Eric. I like how Uric deals or doesn't mean with it. I like, I don't like it, but I enjoy reading the way that they unintentionally gaslight Eric. Yeah, and I really like the way Stacy is then forced to interact with him.

It changes their dynamical lot. All that being said, for me personally, having a woman be the one getting attacked from the inside and trying to cut it out for some reason is just much more affecting to me. Yeah, And I think it's some of it is just the basic fundamental thing of the same reason why we have more Final Girls than Final boys. It's easier to feel for and sympathize with a woman, a vulnerable woman, than it is a vulnerable man. Just that is our natural incination.

Is if a woman falls in front of us, we immediately jumped to help her. If a man does, we might, but we first wait to see if he wants it kind of thing. And I think the other part of that that I think is genius is that we have the early Like the second scene of the movie, it's Stacy and Eric like about to have sex, and she's naked, like she just gets out of the shower. She's naked, She's gorgeous, beautiful body, young woman, and you know, she jumps in bed with him and she's I think she's like owes him a blowjob from like losing a bed the night before. And it's not silacious.

It's not like, hey, look at the teenage Like, yeah, there's moves in this movie. Like it feels really natural in the moment of yeah, you take a shower, you're naked, and then you jump in bed with your boyfriend like this this all fits. And it also gives us this like you know, this moment of like what you expect in a movie about young people, which is yeah, like young hot people in a horror movie. I want to see their body. It's like this is part why it's appealing.

If there everything is nice to look at, so then for the movie to take her body and transform it. Yeah, right now, she's still really scanned clad because it's hot and all of her clothes are just melting off and she is standing there in a brown panties, only she is stabbing herself and pulling something out of her and I just think it's like a very clear and again Carter Smith came from fashion photography, Like he knows how to shoot a woman to make her look however she's supposed to look. And I think it's just like really, really again like without ever saying it, without any of the script acknowledging it, Like, I feel like it's really really specific that this is the character who we have seen like full lost youth in I guess yeah it is.

It's very It is very affecting just to see how quickly like she's turned from a confident like sexy lady too just this shell where her what I assume if she's comfortable enough. I know it's her boyfriend, but if she's comfortable eno to walk around naked and be hot to then actually like have to rebel against your own visage is something that I am very familiar with as a chronically ill person. There's an aspect of that to me that's very affecting that it feels very familiar, like I am now at war with my own body, and it's very sad to see, especially because of how how much they have to speed it up in the movie too. With Eric, you kind of if you didn't know any better, you might agree with everybody like it's you could just cut yourself with a dirty knife, jerk.

Of course you're you're swollen and inflamed. Why don't you chill out? But but like with Stacy, there's no room to be like is she yeah, because we're seeing it. Yeah, Like it's like there's still something in here. And then maybe there's like a five minute break where we're like, I don't know, is there and then you see it and it's like oh, because it's a real big revelation in the book when when Eric's right, you know, like Eric is right and it's a surprise, you're like, oh, no, he's right.

But there's an aspect to Stacy where you're like, just fucking listen to her. She's right, Yeah, you're you're pretty sure. Yes, yes, please listen to her. It's as bad as she's afraid it is. It's as upsetting as she thinks it is.

I just please all get on board with her because she's all alone cutting herself. Yeah, and it's gonna it's gonna have to cut herself in places you can't cut. Yeah, it's there's a I think the hopelessness of stacy situation is amplified when you know the hopelessness of Eric's situation in the book, because it's real, real bad in the book, like he describes it in his chest, he cuts, he cuts his ear off and it's a lot, and it's a lot, and I mean moving right over to Eric. Yeah, I love Eric. I have both versions of Eric.

In the book, Eric is a lot less serious. There's there's an aspect to movie Eric that is kind of like quietly on board but like deferring to Jeff. But like in the book, he's so I mean, he gets he gets vined pretty quick, and that's all he cares about. He doesn't want to think about capturing water. He doesn't care about which banana piece Jeff gives him.

Like he's he's very focused on his own thing and his spiraling. Yeah, and he's like I feel like the early chapters on him are really just clear, like he's the lighter guy, Like he's not going to be a doctor. He's gonna go teach kids. And something that I think Scott Smith does that's really smart in writing Eric is that like Eric seems and I think this is very true of Jeff as well, Like they think in a different language in a way that like Jeff goes into like eagle scout stuff and how to cauterizer wound and this stuff. And Eric is a big like word guy.

He's going to be an English teacher and so it's a lot of like stream of conscious of him doing we're just yciations and like that kind of thing. And he has this kind of interesting relationship with Pablo that just gives him like he's really clear on the page. And I think Sean Ashmore is great and I think, like, I get him again. I saw Sean Ashmore when I read because it was just a very easy, like, yeah, this kind of laid back guy, like you know, he's he's good looking, but he's not like super good looking. He's, you know, kind of the guy that your friend is dating, like like that type of guy.

But I do think he has like a really clear personality on the page. And yeah, and I agree, I think that the switch makes sense. Yeah, yeah, I like him a lot. I do. I agree that he is he is childish and kind of obnoxious, and I wish that he'd be a little bit more serious and all that stuff, But like he feels like a twenty two year old guy that I would have met, totally totally, like he feels very real and in the ways that he is childish, yep, it feels authentic and stuff and and and he is a little infuriating in the book, but again he gets vine it's fine where you're like, I get it.

Bro, God, I would be inseparable if I was fine, because I would be convinced I wasn't vined, like I'm a very I'm like, I'm there's some there's gonna be a diagnosis for this where I'm like an anti hypochondriac but also a hypochondriac. So I think, like, yeah, I probably have that, but it won't matter. I don't need to do anything about it, like I'm fine, but yeah, I definitely have that. So like, I don't even know what my vining would be. I'd probably just function.

I think I would be able to function the entire time and just keep itching and everybody would look at me and the vines would be like popping out of my face, and I'm like, no, it's fine, this is nothing. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it, because keep keep doing it. Yeah, I want banana, Get me banana now. Yeah, I know I can't eat it because the vine has warped my mouth and I can't actually open it, but just like stick it in my ear.

It's good. That's so fun. And then eventually I'd be dead. That's how I fair on the ruins, I think, know thyself, right, Yeah, it's important so onto that I guess our our next character is Mattius. I am I'm deeply I am honestly, deeply disappointed that he is so scaled back in in the movie and that his trajectory is its changed to that of that of no legs, because in the book he he offers a very quiet uh like he he's he's he's an anchor in a different way than Jeff.

Jeff is very like, we gotta survive, we gotta we gotta plan, we gotta work, we gotta fix this. But Matthias, Matthias, Matthias just he's more quietly like he's accepting of it, but not in like a fatalistic way. He's not, this is because where we're gonna die. But he's like, this is where we're at right now. And he's kind of a pompous I think of the group, Yeah, because Stacy especially is like really seems to be very like hung up on what he does.

And when he looks at her, she feels like it's like she'll say something and then he'll look at her and she'll kind of regret whatever she said, like she is very kind of intimidated by his presence, and I think his calmness in the case of everything. And it makes this very interesting because what's to me fascinating on the pages that he is the only real and I mean Pablo too, he is not a point of view character. Why do you think that is? Do you think that was just do you think that was a specific decision for him because we're inside the heads of the other four, but we are not inside his head. Yeah.

I didn't really think about it as I was reading, but I just assumed it was because he is not an air quotes main character, like our main characters are our four Americans, and and I don't know, I feel like I'm Germany Christine. No no, no, I never, I never. I didn't really think about it. It just was the reality of it, Like I almost don't feel like I need to know, because he's he was all His dialogue was very clear about where he was at at any given moment. True, And I liked.

I guess maybe what I'm expressing is that I appreciated how straightforward he was. He was very aware of what was going on. He wasn't being negative, but he also wasn't being a little ray of sunshine about it. And I don't know. Of course, I'm sure there'd be a lot of great interior stuff, but I don't know what else I would get from things from his perspective, you know what I mean?

Yeah, Yeah, it's it's interesting. I think as I'm thinking about it, the fact that we don't get into his head, I think helps with And again I'm saying Stacy, I feel like she's the one that's most prominent about although I think Eric also, especially after he makes the Nazi comment, that there is stuff there of Eric thinking like, oh my god, what is this guy thinking? And we don't know because we know what everybody else is. But it makes us I think where Stacy gets very paranoid about Maddius and what if he's judging her or judging the situation, we're kind of left in that same place of I don't I don't know, Maybe you're overthinking it, but maybe he is. So it's it's just like, I don't know.

It stands out to me and I for the movie, I think that I don't know, I think he would have been a hard extra character because then he's I don't know, they're sort of like they're there. It's just one more person that sort of bulks up their group, whereas everyone sort of serves such a specific purpose when he is knocked out. So yeah, yeah, because I mean he really like he's he brings his back and then he's just laying on a cot the entire time. Yeah, and it's unlike, you know, when that happens to Pablo, and Pablo can't communicate, Like he's still able to communicate, but like I mean not robustly, not for a very long Yeah, it makes sense to like pare down how many people you have to wrangle on top of that of the ruins too, Like from just a screenwriting perspective, they have ninety minutes, Like if you had all four of them in relative good health and Matthias and relatively and then another guy on a bat like, it's just it's so many things to juggle in that short time period.

Yeah, but I missed it. I missed having him around and working and being there. Let me get it. And then the last character again on the page is Pablo and the film's Dmitri, and Dmitri doesn't last long, but I mean a better way to go for him. Oh, his stuff in the novel is fucking awful.

It is, Yeah, it's awful. And just the thing so this is the thing that stuck out the most for me is in the novel, Jeff wants to take cut his legs off essentially, and they they're arguing about it, and he's like, Okay, well we'll put it to a vote because Pablo can't vote, We'll put it to a vote. And Amy's not even up there. Yeah, Amy's down at the bottom of the hill waiting, And I just kept thinking, like, how dare you do this without her? And Amy, who in the book is also a medical student, and the first thing she says when she comes back, it's like, you can't do that?

How could you do that? Like you know better? No, that isn't what we should have done. Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, it's definitely. It's it's a lot.

Yeah, But again, for screenwriting and time purposes, I get why, and just for story pacing, I get why it was done that way. But there is this element of like, you have this person who's mortally wounded. Yeah, I mean his back is broken that you just can't communicate with, You can't tell them what's going on. They can't tell you what they need. It's funny too, because that conversation just came up recently, like with a co worker.

We were talking about languages and how Greek really is, like the expression it's all Greek to me, Like, no, that's because Greek is not a language you can decipher. If you're only language is English, there is no shared you know. It's it's not Latin where you can pull things. It's not Spanish like no, no, no. If somebody is speaking Greek at you, you you cannot by words, understand what they are saying because it is a different foundation of words, and so there is no way.

And it's kind of cute in the novel in the beginning, especially of like how they're still able to all like be friends and how they're able to like constantly be on the same page as far as like what time we're meeting and what we're doing and some tequila and all of that. But yet you know when you have broken back and you are h stuck on a mountaintop with killer vines, like no, that's all gone, and you are just alone with these four other people who cannot help you and cannot do anything, and it's yeah, it's really really effective in the book. Yeah, definitely. So those were of the characters. And again, plot wise, let's talk about the ending because it is different between book and film.

Yeah, it's very different. Yeah, so book we said, they all die it essentially in the same it's like the same things happen, just to the characters shift around of who it happens to write, So Matteus is the one who breaks his back and gets eaten by the vine. Stacy is the one who has cut herself up so badly that eventually she has to be killed, but that's after she accidentally stabs Eric. On the book, it is Eric accidentally stabs Madius and Jeff makes a run for it, thinking when it starts raining he can get out, and he get chop in the minds. So and oh his death is great too because like it's not again, it's not quick like he gets shot, but the vines get him and yeah getting him, he gets he gets like arrowed in the throat.

Yes, that's it awful. I just really like this is some good body horror. I don't think obviously there's some gross upsetting things the book phenomenal ikey disturbing shit. Then the novel, the stuff with the legs is so it's so glorious. Yeah, so in your face.

They don't cut away when you think they're gonna it's bloodier than you think it's gonna be. And one of the things that a book can do that a film cannot, and I remember this actually from Roger Ebert's review of the movie Perfume, was that on the page you can describe smell, and you can communicate smell in really powerful ways, and movies really and I mean, hey, you and I say this as people who grew up with the bog of eternal stench, but you cannot communicate smell on screen. And in the book you have dead bodies, you have sweat, You have characters going to bath the bathroom on themselves because of course they are if they are paralyzed, and you have like where did you poop? I didn't even dig a hole.

I just pooped, Like, oh, yeah, that's great. Now the fines are gonna come take it, because the fines like poop. Just there's so much smell and the smell of blood and the smell of puss and everything. Yeah, it's super gross. And I love it.

I love that kind of sea. Yeah. Uh so yeah, and then the and Stacy is the last one laughed. And Stacy, as we said, goes to the bottom the hill. So Let's arrests and gets characted with the vines.

In the film, uh, the most of the characters are dead. Jeff and Amy have a plan to maybe get away, which is Jeff carries Amy as if she were dead, to the bottom of the mountain. Then Jeff makes a distraction. He starts talking to the may ends even though they don't understand him. When he gets far enough away, Amy makes a run for it to May and shoot Jeff Amy.

Now, there are several different endings, depending upon which cut you have, depending on several things. I had the Blue Ray, so I went through all the endings. What was your ending? So I think I've seen all of them, but you'll have to remind me. The one that I got when I watched it, which I believe was on DVD I have, I don't know, but it was Jeff dumps Amy all covered in blood.

Amy takes off running. She makes it to the jeep and then as she's driving away, you see like the vine in like her eye or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then the Greek show up in the mountain. So I believe that. And I'm not sure because that's the one that plays on my Blu ray as well, and I think that is when I watched this movie.

I think that's what I got on DVD. I think the theatrical ending may have been the one that is the same exact action, but without seeing the vine in Amy's head, where eyeball, there is an ending where it's Amy in the car driving away and the camera is close up on her face and then it cuts to the Greek shung up the mountain. Yeah, So I think, and I could be wrong about that. I've still I've looked it up and I keep like not getting a consistent answer. But I'm guessing that was the theatrical ending because it was the still somewhat hopeful of like, oh no, look she got away, but then we're still ending on this like dark note of now more people are going to die up there.

Yeah. I think the like preferred ending, and that's why it's on the DVD is the yeah, Amy gets away, but she gets the vine in her face, so she's screwed, so is probably everybody that she is touching and so on, and then there is an all an ending on the DVD, which same ending Amy gets away. I can't remember. I think they show the vine in her eyeball, and then it cuts to a cemetery and it's clearly an American cemetery, and you see the cemetery, You've seen it. The cemetery worker like walking around and he hears a phone ringing, and he walks over and the phone is ringing at Amy's grave, and of course there are the red vines are on there.

So that's the best one. That's the one that I watched. Brandon had never seen this, so I watched it with him, and he liked the movie a lot, and we watched all the endings and he was like, Nope, that one's silly, that one stupid. That's the best one, Brandon, he was like, no, because then I have to think about, like, how did they get her body there? When did she die?

How did this not already happen? How are other people not infected? He's like, it's too much logistics. So so I I have a question, and I think I would need I would just want your take on it. But in order to solidify my feelings.

I would prob we need to read the book again. But my question is this in the novel, are we absolutely clear that the vine is transmissible once you leave the ruins? Because I got the impression that it might have been like a religious thing, like a sacrifice offering. And I know that they batted that idea around, or maybe Jeff did, but and I don't think we have Maybe we just never knew for sure. But I thought that was an interesting way to think about it, that it necessarily It wasn't necessarily they were keeping them there because they were going to take the vine and transmit it, but they were keeping them there essentially because they entered into the vine space and the vine is sacred or the vine is revered in some way, and now the vine just has them.

Huh. That's a very good question, because initially, as you're saying that, I'm like, no, no, we know that the vine would that if you leave the mountain, that you're going to spread it. But I'm saying that and realizing, no, we don't know that all. And You're right, there is some and I don't know if it's Jeff thinking it or if it's when they're kind of talking things out and theorizing. But yeah, we we don't know.

We don't know anything because we're never inside the Mayan's heads. So we know. What we know is that they would have been fine if they didn't step on it, because they're the Miyan's, you know, shows as they have just reached the hill and they have not started walking up the hill. They In the book, it's really clear, and I think in the movie actually it's very clear too, but the book just has a little more detail about it so you can kind of get the geography correct. Is that everybody is they're all standing at the bottom of the hill.

The Miyans show up. They have guns, they have a horse. Everybody is screaming. Nobody can understand what's going on. They tried, they think they just want money, so they're trying to throw money at them, and the minds are just trying, clearly, trying to herd them off, but they have no no idea what's being said.

And because the guy has a gun, they're all kind of freaking out. And Amy is taking pictures and Amy just is walking back in order to get a shot, and it's as soon as she steps on the vine that it's Nope, that's when there's no turning back. So in theory, I don't know. I just assumed because of that, and because there is nothing I think just suggest any like other intentions of the vinds, it doesn't feel like this is religious. Yeah, so I've I just always took it as like at its word of right, you've touched the vine.

There's no coming back from that. Now. This is the only place where you can be without spreading it. They have salted the earth all around it. The vines have never gotten out before, and they never will so long as everybody that touches it dies on that hill.

And I definitely think that that probably very much what it is. But I definitely think there's enough subtext that could just be born of them just obsessively thinking that it's interesting to think about that this is like like an ancient species or animal that grew up from the mind shaft or was released from the mind shaft when they started digging, and now it's this thing that is just here and the mions have to be the stewards of more so just because they are than like of this sphear of it getting out. Yeah, I don't know either way. It's still super interesting. Yeah, And I mean, I guess because the Miyons clearly try to get to stop it, right, they hide the trail as soon as there is a chance that they find it, right, because you go back and you realize what happened is they find the trail, and that's when the kids run away, and they run away to tell their parents they're going to the mind.

They're going to the mind. And because they are not, it would be very easy for them to have just immediately there and watch them go up and then sat outside and you know, shoot them if they come down. But they they do try to protect them, They try to get them away from it, and that's and that's very true, and I think that that really does color what the Mayans have to do with it. But if they were truly merciful, would they have not just shot them all immediately? Why leave them trapped up there?

So to me that lends credence to the whole Well, they're doing it for the vine because in the novel specifically, the vine has like tricks, yeah, and like and like stuff that it does, and we don't really get into that in the movie because there's no time. You're right, because the vine smells, the vine will suddenly it smells like an apple pie, and that's the vine. And there's a couple times where Matthias will say, like it wanted us to go out there and find that it passes Jeff's hat up to the hills to them, So it's kind of tormenting them, and it has a wicked sense of humor about Yeah, it laughs at them. Yeah, and and quite obviously in the novel there's a lot of things like that that make the vine another character and the book correct.

But like there's a part of that where I'm kind of just like, I like thinking about it. I don't think it's a flaw of the book or the movie or anybody's takeaway. It's just fun to think about, Like, well, if they really were merciful, they would have just all shot them with arrows, so that well, to keep because they knew what was going to happen, to keep their suffering from from you know, being as awful as they know it can be. Like it's kind of just like but then there's that you can read it in the movie specifically, but like there's a point where they're screaming and it just cuts to them, like looking at each other, at the minds, And so there's a part of it like is this what these white people that came somewhere that they had no business being deserved?

Yeah, and that's something that I the movie and book both could have done things around. But I don't think they had to, because I think it's instead kind of sits there for us to think that very question because there and both of this is true on both the book and the film. They're not like they're they're, you know, dumb young Americans, but they're not mean colonizing Americans on their own right. They're not. They don't do anything.

It's very easy for Shorthand to have a character do something shitty. They could, you know, there's no like I don't know, they walk by a Mayan temple and they like urinate on it. Like there's nothing that they do that fully says they are the kind of Americans that that give this country a bad name. Like no, they're just young people that like there's nothing wrong with what they do on paper. They you know, there's ruins.

Ruins are cool. I'd want to go to ruins if I was somewhere. Oh and Matteius's brother is up there. Okay, so we know this is there. We know it's not like Hallowed Ground, like we we believe we can go there.

It's and it would have been very easy to have them, i don't know, be racist, like make a dumb American comment about something, and they really don't like they're And I remember the first time I watched it, I just assumed they were. And it wasn't until I kind of rewatched it. I'm like, no, no, like they're they're perfectly fine and what they're doing and and so they like like but again, like there's also a little bit of aspect of like, okay, well all white Americans who go somewhere that they culturally and historically represent an aspect of colonizing and abuse and everything else, Like you know, is there that? And I don't know, it's It's interesting because I hadn't thought too deep about because again, the other part of that was to me was all right, well, I guess if that was me, eventually I would kind of come down to try to run so that I could just get shot, because that's a better death than whatever seems to be waiting me up on that hill.

But you're right, like, is it also the idea of I don't know, it's easy to say, oh, yeah, kill somebody first to get them out of their misery. But is that murder verse standing back and self defense being a different justification of using your gun. Yeah, definitely, because that's how I initially had read it obviously, like that that they're just standing guard because they don't want to be the reason these people die, but they also need to preserve. They can't let them leave, so whatever happens happens. But when you in the novel, when you get that real sense of the real repetition of it, how often it's happened, The fact that it could mimic smells like when did it smell chocolate?

When did it? Like the breadth of that is like, yeah, those those minds fully know what's happening up there. Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't judge them. I don't judge no, no, yeah, no, no, no, that I I agree completely.

But yeah, that that that is something I didn't think too much about is really and I think part of it is because I was reading it and watching it so much, considering the characters and considering the choices that are made as an adaptation that I didn't really consider the vine itself. But yeah, there is a lot of intrigue and different ways you can kind of spin what is this thing and what as or as a kind of you know, shoot off of that, what has it done to its surroundings and it's surrounding people. M it's really interesting. It's it's it's such a it feels like such a tight, like insular story, but there are these weird things that kind of spring out where you're like, well, what's the implication of this?

And there are parts in it and everyone's super judgy of Jeff for this, but there are parts where it's like Jeff seems to enjoy this. Jeff seems to be proud of the vine. He's fascinated by it. Yeah, it's kind of fascinating. It can like it snaps up and grabs a rock when he throws it at it or something.

Yeah, he's tasing it. He's trying, he's trying to learn it, like what is it? You know? It does it? It understands organic material but and rejects in organic material like just some of those things that Yeah, and it is like you're you're right, we didn't get into that, but it does it.

It is has this mean sense of humor. In the book, it plays tricks on them. Yeah, it does one of the things it does. And again it's they're in a little bit in the movie. But the way it tries to it pits Stacey and Amy against each other.

Yeah, yeah, it's it's bad. It wants them to turn on each other quite obviously in the book, like it's its goal. Yeah, it's not just about killing them and eating them, which presumably is what it ultimately does. Like it toys with them. It's like, it's like the difference between the way my cats attack something.

Yeah, it is. And that's why that animalistic thing is like, well is it an animal? Is it? It's it's interesting the way it uses voices in the book. And it's sad that I get why they didn't do it in the movie.

But it's sad we didn't get that because that really breeds a lot of paranoia and in fighting. Yes, yeah, because in and again in the movie, like we know that, yeah, Amy probably has cheated on Jeff and we've heard kiss Matteius in the very opening scene. But in the book, even though we know Stacy has in the past cheated on Eric, in the book, the vine is trying to make Eric believe and it does that Stacy and Matteius are having sex and they're not. They didn't, but it has heard sex before, so we can mimic it. And it's doing that, and they all hear it and they can't go away.

There's nothing they can do except cut off their ears to not hear It's it's it's wild. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that I just want to throw out was the deleted scenes. There are a few on the DVD, and again, it's one of those cases where you're where you watch a really because this is a really tight movie.

It's ninety minutes to the tea and you deleted scene and you're like, oh, yeah, I get why you'd film that. I also you made the exact right decision to cut it out. There's one scene where it rains, which is this moment of hope because it rains and they can you know, and in the book with that does like that happens in the book, and it makes sense because it's like, Okay, we're not gonna die of thirst up here, We're still gonna die in horrible ways that are probably worse than thirst. Because now we're going to be kept alive longer. But we also then have the moments of not capturing the rain correctly or fighting during the rain and we didn't catch it.

So it'd like it adds more drama to the book, but on film completely all it does is break things up and suddenly all things aren't as bad as they could be because it rained. There is one scene after Stacey and Eric die in the film. It kind of immediately it's Jeff and Amy going down the hill, and there's a deleted scene where it's the two of them like spending one last night together talking a little bit about their and again it's like it's a kind of nice scene to have the two of them because Amy is apologizing for, you know, for all the things she did, and Jeff is very just forgiving and very nice, and you're like, no, no, no, like we don't need that here. That totally breaks the tension of us not knowing what's gonna happen.

Yeah, and then the last one and again this is on the page there there are I think there are three bottles of tequila that come into play quite a bit. Like it's kind of cool thing because I it's something I love when any Booker movie does it when they keep a really good inventory of supplies and you, as the reader know right, like you knew when they were down to one bottle, right? Can I tell you something that I noticed watching the movie and I lost my ship and I made Zach rewind it. So at the very beginning when Jeff is trying to get Amy to like get on board and come, they're in the hotel room packing up, and Jeff grabs two protein bars, a banana, and two iced teas, and I most lost my mind exactly what I'm like, they have that up there, and they have grapes in a tuna sandwich, and they have an orange yepant of coke.

I know everything they have. And the fact that like in the movie, I could see him grab that ship. Yeah, it was so satisfying. And there's even a deleted scene of them eating, of them dividing everything up and just eating, like there's like one more scene of that. Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's important.

But and the drinking in the book, it's a big thing because like a lot of the characters are drinking, and of course Jeff the entire time is like, don't this is terrible, like, this is the worst thing you could do right now, You're just dehydrating yourself. But they do it for different reasons. And again, if I'm stuck on a hill and I'm gonna get killed by vines, I probably would also like some tequila. Uh. And in the book it's it is what leads to Amy's death because she has drank most of the tequila uh.

And so there was a deleted scene where the characters drink just it's like one of the nights and they pass it around and Jeff is like, we shouldn't do it, and they're like, oh, come on, like what else are we gonna do? And it doesn't do anything, like, it doesn't turn into them drunk. But it's one of those like other cases where I watch it, I'm like, I bet they cut that, not even for pacing, but because somebody watching that said, if I'm an audience member watching this, I am now thinking, these idiots, why are they drinking? Yeah, Like, it's just one of those things that runs through your head of yeah, don't the audience is already going to have their kind of quills up, thinking I don't know if I should like this people to give them and again, something I love about this is that there's nothing they could have done.

There is no way out of this, But you don't want to give anything to a like, you know, kind of wise as horror audience to say, well, they should have just not drunk the pecula exactly Again, with the time there's in the book. It is a problem and it causes problems, and it was a bad idea. But then you're kind of like, well do you blame them? So you have time to think and sit with that. But if it was just presented with little context on the screen, yeah, obviously you would use that as a weaponization against them, or at the very least, well, I wouldn't have done that.

Well I would have been smart enough not to do that. Why aren't they being smarter? Yeah? Yeah, And in the film, I guess I think it's in terms of the body count and who's responsible for what. I think the Vines only actually kill one character, right, They kill Madius, Jeff gets killed by the Miyons, Pablos killed by the Miyons, Stacy get ultimately is you know asks I think Amy or Jeff to kill her and Eric gets stabbed by Stacy.

It's similar in the book, I mean the vines also, I think get Amy. So there's more, but the that was apparently like one of the things Carter Smith said was that of what he found interesting about the book was that, you know, he'd be able to make a pror film that wasn't about like a tangible villain. There was no masked outsider. He says, these kids are basically doing this to themselves. Uh, and I mean they they are, ultimately, but also they didn't have a choice, like they were going to die one way or another up there.

But but it is an interesting way of thinking of it. And something else that I can remember he said this or that I wrote down. I think he said it on the commentary. Uh, that it's it gets to be a claustrophobic story, but told entirely outdoors. Yeah, she's really cool because they have nowhere to go.

Yeah, there's nowhere for them to go, but like they could. That's not how you think of claustrophobia Usually it is quite literal, like a crawl space or an attic. No, this is like but they can't they can't leave. They they's they had. They're in this tiny little circle and there's nothing there and and there's all that stuff about like the evidence that people have tried before that and adds I think to that feel like Jeff finds finds a pan that had had a warning scratched into it, and like the vine took it down.

And it's the same thing with Stacy's body at the end of the novel, like it pulls their body away. Yeah, everything, nothing they do matters, And it's kind of like when you know that it doesn't matter what choices they made. Yes, and again that the vine it took the sign down, but it left it there so that Jeff could see that somebody was there and they left it. Like just that added sense of just pure evil, Like it leaves that Matteius's brother's body there the vine. It's like the vine knew he would be there and they wanted to save it for him to see and then take it away.

It just it is, it's just this pure evil and you know it's these poor, pretty young people just make one bad decision. Look, what can happen to you people? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, So I think that's everything I had to say about the Ruins, Uh, I think so for me, it's great, it is, Yeah, but I love it, and I will just say, like, if you've seen the movie and you're like me about the book or whatever, it's it's a different experience. It's really great.

I think it's it's so well written. It was very difficult to put down. Yeah, really readable, really fun but awful also awful. Yeah, it's it's my favorite kind of horror novel where it feels kind of epic, like it's it's nice and media. It's a good three hundred pages.

It it's just it's giving you something you haven't had before. Uh, it's it does something. This is just a personal writing style I like. Is that the the even though it's not real chapters. The chapters are quick, like it's a couple of pages per character and then we'll rotate.

So it reads really easily to where like you're going to bed and you start reading it and you're like, okay, I'll read one more character. Oh no, I'll keep going. I'll keep going. Like it it does. It really does keep you going.

Yeah, all right, And you've seen other things by Carter Smith. I have not. He's the best. So a new movie just came out called The Passenger. I haven't watched it, Like, yeah, it has Kyle Gallner in it as well, so I will be watching it very soon.

But I recommend all of his work very highly. It always looks beautiful and they always end up being character studies about people you wouldn't expect. So I did listen to There's a podcast I listened to called Feelings Wizard Feeling Scene, I think it's Feeling Scene, and Carter Smith was interviewed on there and the concept of the podcast is a creator is like talking about a movie where they felt scene were they identified with a character. And it's Carter Smith and he's talking about Nightmare in Elm Street two. So he talks a little bit about this is something I didn't know that he's gay.

That So that was one of those like, oh, first time kind of seeing you know, a character that I could immediately understand as the main character in horror film. You talked a little little bit about the passenger and I guess Swallow and I mean and I keep meaning to see both of those and I have not yet. But he's a bright guy, like you can tell he knows his horror history and that he has obviously is a very good visual artist. But yeah, there's interesting. I think he's he has a point of view, and he did he this This could have been a really basic movie that nobody would ever talk about again seventeen year years later unless they you know, it was on TV in front of them.

But it's it's elevated. And I think the character stuff is the main reason why I agree he I think he's tremendous at relating to the viewer what what a character is going through. Yeah, and that's really important. I think when you're doing these like I don't want to call his movie small or tight. It's just he has such a there's such a focus on like the people in them, the character.

There's no fat to this movie. Oh my, it's my favorite thing. Yeah, everything matters. Don't show me something that's not going to pay off, don't introduce something that's not going to matter later. I want everything to have a purpose, especially in nineteen minutes.

And you are right about that. He does. Yeah, we see it. I was so jazzed about that like that. It's it's fun too because I know, you know, the author adapted his own screen like book for a screenplay, and I think that's where a lot of like the really good stuff that works comes from but like it's clear that also the filmmaker involved had a had a knowledge and affection of the story.

And I really appreciate that too, because it's not some like just just film stuff and throw it on screen kind of adaptation. It it feels good with the feeling of the book. Everything feels like it were They feel like two little complimentary pieces to a bigger picture. Yeah, it's they work together really well. And so if if you are like us in finding that relationship between a book and a film, like in wanting to see what the different ways that's done, I think this is just such a great prime example of how how how they are two different mediums, how they can do different things.

How again, like I said about smell, like how you can terrify somebody on the page describing how a body smells, verse how you can shoot a film and make it feel so hot. They are They both work and are telling the same story but in really smart ways. And I think credit to Scott Smith and Carter Smith for putting those together in both ways. Yeah. Fun, fun, a lot of fun.

Thank you for suggesting this. Yeah, I mean again, I had wanted to do kind of kind of close looks at adaptations for a long time, and I am very glad we did this one to start. So if you have more that you'd like to do, please share them. And this goes for our for our listeners. If there are books and films that you find to be really interesting dialogues with each other, then give us some of those ideas.

I guess on where are we now? So you're not on Facebook, but the group is still in facebooks. There's a femine critique on Facebook. We have an Instagram that I never use. You need to use it more because I never remember to do it.

I'm really bad at Instagram. But we're on Instagram and I think feminine critique pod or podcast that feels right, something like that, and we are on Twitter at feminine podcast. I think those are all the places. You and I are both on Blue Sky now, yeah, maybe we should make something for there. We could, Yes, why not let us do that.

We'll be on Blue Ski at whatever feminine critique thing we figure out how to say. Yeah, so all those places come tell us stuff and don't forget to get Christine's books because they're amazing. Yeah that's me and Emily too is really great and she's a good writer and you should follow her everywhere. And you can find me at Deadly Dolls and places. You can find Christine at exteen, Underscore, Underscore It, most places, most places, Underscore, makepiece, Extein, make Pace.

I'm I think I'm the only one banging around these days, so I say, you think, but what if there's another one. There's a lady in the UK who raises greyhounds named Christine, but she sounds delightful. I don't want to send her to the ruins. Oh no, I don't know. She better be nice to those greyhounds.

I mean we just have to like send her an all expenses paid vacation to Mexico with really specific instructions on how to find the hidden paths. And you keep going, and if you do it quietly because you need to beat the Miyans before you get there. And then she gets on the hill And then did I just threaten find out on lovely greyhound make peace? I'm sorry, miss, I'll drop a little nap okay yes with pictures. Yeah, but you shouldn't bring the dogs there because I don't want the dogs getting mined.

Well, there you go, stay away all the horrors I've just inflicted on this poor woman. I don't know well unless your name is Christine, make peace, and you are not the Christine makebace. I'm talking to you right now. You all have a lovely day. Bye bye, two week.

I don't know what else I can do for you. Are you sickly, little plant? Are you just playing stubborn? What is it you want? What is it you need?

I've given you sunshine, I've given you dirt. You've given me nothing but heartache and hurt. I'm begging you, sweetly, I'm down on my knees. Oh, please grow for me. I've given you plant food and wanted to sip.

I've given your pot ash. You've given me sip. Oh God, how I missed you? Oh pod, how you tease? Now?

Please grow for me. I've given you southern exposure to get you to thrive. I've pitched your back heart like I'm supposed to. You're barely alive. I've tried you at levels of moisture from desert to mid I've given your grow lights and mineral sublements.

What do you want from me? What? Oh