By Tenley Woodman Planning a tequila-drenched vacation in Mexico? Watch “The Ruins” for lessons in what not to do. Mix a backpacking German, man-eating plants and paranoid villagers and you have an unintentionally funny disaster masquerading as a...

It's a tough call, really. You, your best friend, and your respective boyfriends go all the way down to Mexico for a little fun in the sun. The hotel pool is fine, and your boyfriends are way cute. It's just like being in America except now you're scared to drink the water. Then this German guy (cute, too) comes over and is, like, "You wanna come see these ruins my brother went to and hasn't been heard from since?"

You guys follow him, even though your Spidey sense is totally tingling. Like, why is the path to the ruins all covered up? And why are those indigenous kids staring at you? But you went because your boyfriend wanted to - he's one of those fit, intrepid American med students. And within five minutes one of you is dead and the rest of you are stuck at the top of a big stone temple covered in flesh-eating vines that also burrow beneath the skin.

Jena Malone is the "you" in that scenario for "The Ruins," a surprisingly effective little horror nightmare that opened yesterday without a screening for critics. I jumped legitimately at least twice, covered my eyes during most of the amateur on-site surgeries, and felt the pit of my stomach tighten up once Jonathan Tucker and Shawn Ashmore - as the boyfriends - lowered Malone and Laura Ramsey into the temple's mouth to find a ringing cellphone.

The movie is short, and has about two sets for the actors to slowly lose their minds over. The photography, by Darius Khondji, has...
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