The Ruins is based on the best-selling novel by Scott Smith, author of
A Simple Plan, who also wrote the screenplay. Carter Smith, the noted photographer and the director of the creepy short film
Bugcrush (not to be confused with photographer and director Carter B. Smith) helms the film, which is produced by Ben Stiller. Jonathan Tucker (
In the Valley of Elah), Jena Malone (
Donnie Darko), Laura and Joe Anderson (
The Covenant and
Across the Universe, respectively) are Ashmore's fellow tourists, who are, literally, trapped in a tourist trap like no other.
SCI FI Weekly talked to Ashmore by phone. Please note
the interview has a few spoilers, but all are revealed or implied in the film's trailers.
What's the worst vacation you've ever had?Ashmore: I went on a snowboarding trip in high school, and I'd broken my arm the day before the trip, and I'd already paid and all my friends were going. That was the worst trip because I sat while they all snowboarded. And that
sucked!
That sounds pretty bad!Ashmore: It was! I don't know why I even went, because I was just miserable. I just sat in the lodge and watched [my friends] do runs. And I just sat there and was bummed out. I should have just stayed at home and not gone, but I'd already paid, and it was already booked and all my buddies were going. So I went anyway.
But no killer vines tried to eat you?Ashmore: No! No killer vines. No serious injury while away anywhere. I usually injure myself
before I go on vacation.
Well, that's good! That's planning ahead!Ashmore: Yeah! It's good to not be in a foreign country and have to take care of yourself. So ... that's good!
Are you familiar with movies like Hostel, Hostel: Part II and Touristas?Ashmore: Yes.
What do you think is going on right now that we're getting paranoid about traveling?Ashmore: More than anything, it's that uncertainty. I think it's that idea of being out of your element. And that was one of things that hit me the most when I read [the novel]
The Ruins. One of the things I liked about it was the transition between [the situation] of these Americans who are sort of having this frivolous vacation in which everything is safe, everything is taken care of, and the extreme [situation] that they go through when all that technology and safety is removed. And how people change when forced to survive. And I think the difference, too, between stuff like
Touristas and
Hostel is that in those films, it's human beings preying on foreigners, as opposed to a film like
The Ruins, which is about survival, about nature versus the cushy lifestyle that we've developed over the years. So I think there is a difference, but I don't know really what it is, about specifically us traveling to new places and us being afraid of that. I think that's sort of a natural human thing to do, just being removed from your comfort zone, from your safety zone, where we sort of exist from day to day.
You mention how in movies like Hostel it's human beings who are the culprits, but at the same time in The Ruins, a lot of the bad things that happen are things that [the] people [trapped on top of the ruins] are inflicting on each other.Ashmore: I think the difference between
The Ruins and
Touristas and
Hostel is that those depict outside influences. There's an outside organization that's killing people or making money of off that. The interesting thing about
The Ruins is that once these characters get to the hill [the ruins on which they are trapped], boyfriend and girlfriend become enemies, in a sense. There's a group mentality that they have in order to survive, but at a certain point, those relationships completely break down. And survival mode takes over.
And that's what so interesting about this film, to see relationships break down, to see how characters transform when they're put in a situation of complete survival. And again, there's no outside [human] influence. The outside influence is that they're put in a certain situation, which is being stuck in the middle of the jungle, and they do these things to themselves. The worst things that happen to these characters they inflict on themselves, as opposed to [members of] some foreign culture doing it to them. They're in a situation where they hurt themselves and hurt each other.
And that's what so scary about it, the idea that your friend or your girlfriend or your friend's girlfriend—
that's your enemy, essentially, at the end of the day. That was a really interesting sort of dynamic to play with. I'd say 80 percent of the movie is five characters on top of this hill just trying to survive, and how those relationships shift and change is pretty drastic and dramatic.
And what percentage of the entire shoot did you spend on a styrofoam hill made to look old Mayan ruins?Ashmore: It wasn't styrofoam. A guy named Grant Major, who did the production design for the
Lord of the Rings, actually designed this ruin. And it was amazing. It was a little city, basically. It was built out of rock and foam core and real plants and sand. There was an elevator, so you could get equipment up [to the top]. It was raised up maybe 50 feet in the air at the top of the pyramid. It looks much taller in the film when you actually see it. There were two pieces -- there was the base and the top of the pyramid. But it really was like a little city underneath, with different departments -- the sound department, the camera department, wardrobe, heating tents, places to change. But I'd say we spent maybe 75 percent of the entire shoot in that location. Once the film gets going, after you've been introduced to the characters at the resort and sort of gotten to know them, they wind up at the ruin, and that's where the rest of the story takes place. But yeah, I'd say 75 percent of the shoot we were on the ruin.
Sounds like Waiting for Godot. Ashmore: I thought [acting with a small cast in such a small area] might get kind of stagnant or we might sort of feel, "Well, we've been here months on end, and it's getting kind of boring." But there was so much detail [on the set of the ruin], from the tents to the windlass [going down into the pyramid], the hole which leads down into the middle of the ruin ... just the way they designed it ... shoes from different eras and compasses and all this digging equipment. You could literally spend hours just digging around through all the props and stuff, the idea being that there have been people coming to these ruins for generations, essentially. [There is] stuff from the late 1890s and stuff from the 1960s, transistor radios and all this stuff, all really, really detailed and really sort of amazing. The first time I went up there, I spent maybe an hour digging through the tents, looking through the backpacks that have been left by other travelers. I mean, it was really, really interesting.
Heh! I don't know. I think it was up for a few months. I'm sure it will probably be taken down. I'm sure it's stored somewhere.
Had you seen [Ruins director Carter Smith's short horror movie] Bugcrush before signing on?Ashmore: I was sent
Bugcrush and the script at the same time. I watched the short film first, and that's what really piqued my interest. So, going in and reading the script, I had Carter's style and his sensibility in mind while I was reading the script. I actually watched it right before I read the script. And I loved it. I mean, it was so twisted, it was dark, I liked the tone he took with the actors. It feels very understated. There was a really creepy sort of vibe. It's about jumps and scares and not classic sort of horror film techniques where you're jumping all over. It's really about setup, and having that pit in your stomach when you really don't know what's happening and you know something is wrong, but you don't know what, and you really can't put your finger on it until it's too late. And that's the impression I got out of
Bugcrush, and it's what I think Carter really did bring to
The Ruins, just that sense of doom. That sense of you don't know where [the narrative] is going, it's not predictable, but you know that something is not right, and he's got a really great touch and a really great gift in creating that kind of atmosphere.
Do you think it's his eye as a photographer that helps communicate that, in a way that other directors wouldn't be able to?Ashmore: I think visually he certainly has a style that's great.
There's a couple of great shots in
Bugcrush [that are] creepy as hell. Most importantly, it's his character development and the way that he tells a story, as much as his eye as a photographer is a huge gift. There's something about his personality and his sensibility that know how to create that tension. I don't think it's entirely visual, though that's part of it. He has a great sense of storytelling and a great sense of pacing. Especially for a less experienced director, he has a sensibility with actors. ... His communication and his ability to help us along and figure [out] the world he was creating was pretty amazing.
On The Ruins you were also working with another really visually accomplished guy, Darius Khondji [renowned cinematographer of The City of Lost Children, Se7en, Panic Room, Wimbledon among many others]. How did these two really visual guys collaborate? Ashmore: I wasn't in any of the preproduction meetings, but just as far as the way that they shot, they seemed to be completely on the same page. And the thing that I loved about shooting this movie was that we were shooting with natural light, which is always amazing. It's fast. It's real. It's really raw. And Darius is incredible. There was this really blown-out sort of daylight that we shot in most of the time, as compared to the night stuff. And there's one light on the whole hill. When it's nighttime, it's nighttime. All the night stuff is basically lit by moonlight, which is really difficult. [Smith and Khondji] seemed to collaborate really well. And the contrast between the daylight and the night stuff was so intense that they really had to be on point together to pull that off. I saw the film, not a complete cut, and the contrast is beautiful. The framing is interesting, the movement in the film is interesting. They seemed to be right on the same page from the beginning.
Yeah!
How was that, dealing with your first on-set anatomy lessons?Ashmore: Amazing! The amputation scene was one of my favorite parts of the book and one my favorite parts of the script. It's probably the most horrific, barbaric way of committing an amputation. It's probably worse than how soldiers' legs were amputated during the Civil War. No anesthetic. No tools other than a hunting knife. And these kids, basically, in their early 20s, mid 20s, have to do it. They make the decision to do it themselves. That setup is incredible. And we had, honestly, the most amazing prosthetic guys create these
real legs. I mean, we ... cut them off! And it's real and it's bloody and there's gore and there's bone and there's gristle. I mean, it's disgusting! [Laughs.] And we got to do it. We got to do it over and over and over again. You kind of get desensitized to it, because you see the pieces beforehand.
Carter tried to let us only see the details on the day [of shooting the scene]. I had seen some art, so I had an idea of what it was going to look like. But it's pretty disgusting. It's pretty hard not to feel sick to our stomach when we are actually doing it. It not like it [was shot] in pieces and we shot around it. The takes we were shooting were probably like three minutes long. And it was literally breaking and cutting [the legs] and cauterizing the wounds. We did that several times. So it feels really real, you know? It's really hard to explain what it's like to do it. It's certainly not a pleasant experience, and as an actor, the closer you can get and the more real it is while you're doing it, the better. And I don't think it gets any more real than what we had on this film. It was pretty extreme. But I also didn't feel like the gore and stuff in this film is used in excess. It certainly is gory, but it's ... sort of what would happen. If you were put in this situation, and you needed to do it, that's what would happen. That was kind of important, I think, that we weren't just chopping and hacking people up just for the sake of it.
