Not enough ominous rustling.

63. The Ruins – Scott Smith

Even with villainous plants in Mexico that are clearly hungry, for some reason, this just didn’t really feel like it was moving along when I read it. It just seemed very dry, like the throats of everyone trapped on the evil plants’ hill. It made sense, but without the research scene, I think horror is less effective. There’s something about revealing actual information that makes the horror of some supernatural (in this case very super – it imitates phones and voices and smells) horror more scary, I guess. Information is power and brings the possibility of triumphing over the supernatural and these tourists had none. They were just waiting, and rotting and sunburned and somehow avoiding their iced tea, which for me should be way more scary, especially outside! But, I mostly just felt sorry for them, especially Mathias, because there wasn’t much support for him and he had to deal with a bunch of selfish and self-righteous Americans and one Greek with a broken back on a death hill.

 

Danger Crumples totally knows how to defeat plants, so this is also not horror to him.