After making the festival rounds in 2017, Ruin Me has finally found a home as streaming exclusive on Shudder. My go-to for finding the off-the-wall horror that might not be playing on the big screens near me, Shudder has been consistently putting out some fun horror films … and Ruin Me is no exception. Coming from first-time director Preston DeFrancis, Ruin Me is a meta horror film that takes place at a “Slasher Sleepout”, full of references and nods to the movies that came before it. And this self-awareness runs throughout the entire movie … for better or worse.
I didn’t know beforehand but Slasher Sleepouts are very, very real. An escape room set in the middle of the woods, you and your teams have to brave a night in the cabin together, as actors out in the woods scare you on your way to survive. They can touch you but you can not touch them (the standard haunted house rules).
In Ruin Me, a group of six, (two couples and two loners) show up to an abandoned gas station, where their Sleepout experience is about to begin. After being grilled on the rules by the host, they have bags pulled over their heads and are dropped off in the middle of the woods. Luckily for everyone (at least at the start), one of the couples is escape room junkies, immediately looking for clues to help get the story started.
Fake scares permeate the beginning of the trip (obviously just part of the night’s pre-planned script), but then then things start to seem slightly too real. Of course, if this was just a normal escape room, this would be be cause for alarm, but all of the characters think the violence is just part of the experience and go along for the ride.
While there are some jumps throughout, there was nothing too crazy. Some tense scenes were actually very well done, the suspense keeping my attention throughout the never-boring hour-and-twenty-seven minute runtime.
There are some definite issues with Ruin Me, though: the movie really never knows if it should be funny, scary or dramatic (and I wish it stuck with the first two). As the movie continues towards the end, it jams in some deep, personal drama with the main characters, which just feels forced to create a twist that I really didn’t care about. As the weakest point of the movie, the twist really forces the plot go into some very … silly places (because, everything else in this direct-to-streaming horror movie seemed somewhat plausible … I know, I know.)
While not the most groundbreaking horror movie I’ve ever seen, it is still a very fun slasher that I would totally recommend checking out if you have Shudder. (But mostly, Ruin Me had me looking up Slasher Sleepout and horror-themed camping trips within driving distance. No luck yet.)
