SLEEPLESS...WATCHING "THE RUINS"...CONTEMPLATING THE NOTION OF ARTISTIC MURDER

So, we got Direct TV last week and, along the way, I ended up meeting a host of idiots who now have my freaking number. Direct TV's good--better than cable which is really the only reason we picked it up. I though, though, that technology had advanced past the dish that casts a shadow that a family of six can picnic under. It's like a freaking golf umbrella. Nonetheless, we got it and it came with a free three months of these "premium" movie channels which, I'm finding, is really no more than a few Emmy-nominated shows packaged in between about 22 hours of a movie rotation that you could only find at the worst movie store in the country. It's like the movies that you would find on the bottom shelf at the back of a truck stop an hour out of Omaha with a sign that reads FREE WEEK RENTAL WITH PURCHASE OF A MEDIUM FOUNTAIN DRINK. Last night, during prime time, it was something like What About Bob?, Die Hard 2 and Point Break. People pay money for this crap?

So among their killer lineup of sequels, throwaways and "Taxi Cab Confessions," they're championing the recent thriller, The Ruins. Let me tell you something, when you're laying on the couch at 2AM on a work night wondering what happened to your sleep schedule almost sobbing in your own anguish, there's only one last thing that'll push you over the edge (aside from someone running in and punching you in the nose) and that is this stupid movie. I'll spoil the whole thing for you so you don't have to invest the time. I'll do it in one sentence. Stupid tourists in Mexico visit ancient Mayan ruins and then get eaten alive by vines. It took 90 minutes for director Carter Smith do to what I did in fifteen words. This movie was absolutely excrutiating. I started thinking while I was mindlessly watching the stupidity: whoever wrote this sure fooled a ton of people on the way up. I mean, if I pitched a movie about "killer vines," my lovely wife would probably leave me...with nothing. So I get up this morning after falling back asleep in my bed and I look up this movie to find out who wrote this garbage and it's an adult (yeah, I couldn't believe it either--in fact, the dude's 43 years old) named Scott Smith who also penned the hella-dope A Simple Plan. See A Simple Plan. I promise you it's ill.

Scott Smith wrote a story about killer vines and managed to find hundreds of people to help him make the movie, but found a studio that would fund it and then got a nationwide opening and, despite probably horrible reviews, he got it into HBO's rotation. Of course, we're finding that HBO's rotation also still has To Wong Foo in it.

You see movies like this and you realize that it's totally possible to make that remake of Children of the Corn. I'm starting pre-production next year. Be on the lookout.