“One of the things that was so interesting to me about the characters was that they start out as these very sexy, very normal, very real kids. But by the end of the film they are just ravaged, destroyed; they've turned into monsters,” says director Carter Smith. To best maximize that startling transformation, Smith was very specific in making his casting choices.
“There were two main elements I was looking for. The first sounds very basic but was actually difficult to achieve,” Smith explains. “I didn't want actors who looked like every other actor in your typical young adult horror movie. From my experience as a photographer over the years, I've always been attracted to people who are interesting-looking rather than conventionally attractive. So even though we have a very sexy cast, they're not typically `Hollywood.' They don't look like everyone else. For me, that made the story instantly more realistic, because they really look like your typical American student away on a party weekend.”
Smith's second requirement was to find actors with the chops to do justice to the dark, subtle layers of Scott Smith's novel and script. Notes producer Bender, “It's sometimes difficult to cast horror films, especially when there have been a slew of them, because actors are afraid the movie will brand them in a certain way. But by having Carter involved and having a novel written by a prestigious writer, we were able to attract another level of talent. We wanted to make sure they knew that this wasn't going to be some `Little Shop of Horrors' kind of film. So when we approached our principals, not only did we send them the script, but also Carter's short film `Bugcrush.' And we made sure they knew about the novel on which the script was based and that the novelist had written the screenplay. I'm glad we did because the actors quickly grasped from Carter's short film that he was a talented director, and from the script and the novel that the characters they'd be playing were wonderfully layered and offered terrific acting possibilities.”
“The characters in `The Ruins' are really grounded. What makes it all work is the clever way the story is set up,” observes Ashmore. “The only reason these two couples are on vacation together is because Amy and Stacy are friends. Jeff and my character, Eric, don't hang out when they're back home. They aren't really friends. So the audience gets to know these people at the same time as the characters are getting to know each other. Suddenly they're all in this dire predicament. It's very raw, very fast-paced, and it makes you think, how do relationships change? What happens to people's behavior when they're faced with matters of life and death?”
The de-facto leader of the group is Jeff, played by Jonathan Tucker. “Jeff is a first year student in medical school, so he knows the reality of human anatomy, he's seen some blood, but nothing prepares him for what he faces here,” says Tucker. “When you're telling a story like this, you want somebody to believe in, and I think all the other characters want to believe that Jeff has the answers and can get them out of this terrible situation. He's the sensible one, the guy who doesn't party all night long, so he's the one they turn to. The problem is, everything he does is based on science and what's happening around him here completely defies any kind of logic. Jeff doesn't realize it right away. He puts on a brave face, pretends that he's the man with the information, and ends up making sensible decisions that ultimately harm the group; things that will really freak out the audience - especially with regards to Mathias.”
While Jeff is the leader, Eric is the everyman. “He's not a complicated guy,” says Ashmore. “He's just a dude on vacation, there for a good time, so I think the audience can relate to him more than to Jeff because he doesn't pretend to have all the answers. As things start to spiral out of control, he focuses on protecting Stacy, but once she's gone into the ruins and gotten hurt, she starts changing. She lashes out at Eric even as he's trying to comfort her. And yet he continues to do what he can to help her and the others in the group. He's a good guy, but the nicest guys can be pushed too far, and when Eric has to help Jeff deal with Mathias's broken legs, his whole outlook changes. That was a very interesting shift to play.”
A similar shift in demeanor can be seen in Jeff's girlfriend, Amy. “In Amy's mind, the trip is all about endless beaches and tropical drinks; an adventure with her boyfriend and her best friend Stacy. Nothing more, nothing less,” says Malone. “But once the group gets trapped, you start to see her as a much more complex person. So much of that complexity came directly from Scott Smith's novel, in which there are a lot of internal monologues. For an actor, that's a lush landscape. What's really beautiful about the script is that it's so simple. There's not a lot of dialogue. It's all about what's happening on the inside of the characters. As a cast, we really got into that.”
Malone isn't implying that Smith's novel was a direct translation to the screen. As Laura Ramsey points out, “My character, Stacy, is Eric's girlfriend, and after she goes into the ruins to help Mathias, she becomes obsessed with this vine. But in the book, Eric is the one who becomes obsessed and infatuated. So when I read the book, I took little tidbits for Stacy, but I also took some from Eric's character as well.”
Similarly, when the four actors arrived in Australia and began rehearsals, they discovered that the director was open to hearing their thoughts and interpretations of the characters. “We kind of made the opening our own, to help establish our relationships through their behavior towards one another on vacation,” Ramsey says. “Carter had a lot of rehearsals in which we did improv, talked about our characters and what they would do in any given situation, and that inspired some script changes. Carter was so open with us, letting us have our own opinion about what we felt was right and not right for our characters. It was a truly helpful process.”
Adds Tucker, “All of the character work we did in pre-production translates well onto the screen. We make difficult and sometimes outrageous decisions, like diving into dark openings without knowing what's inside, yanking squirming vines out of people's bodies-we even try to perform an operation with no anesthesia, using a rock, a pocket knife and a hot frying pan. You need to understand and empathize with these characters if you're going to take this journey with them and if you're going to root for their survival”
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