Netflix Just Added One Of The Best And Most Disturbing Body Horror Movies Just In Time For Halloween

Published Oct 10, 2026, 8:14 AM EDT

Bradley is an experienced and award winning journalist and all around entertainment fanatic. He is a passionate film and TV fan and long time attendee of San Diego Comic Con. 

In the horror genre, one of the more effective tropes that manages to get under viewers' collective skins is body horror. In other words, any horrific situation that alters, mutilates, or transforms the human body into something monstrous. Many films have tapped into this subgenre, notably the highly successful Alien franchise, but in 2008, one overlooked horror film took this concept to the next level.

The Ruins, directed by Carter Smith and based on the bestselling novel by Scott Smith, who also wrote the film's screenplay, took a silly concept of killer plants and turned into a gruesome, grisly and unflinching body horror nightmare. Many did not appreciate the film at the time, with a 5.9 on IMDB and a 2.8 average rating on Letterboxd as of this writing. But now that the film has been added to Netflix and with the recent resurgence of body horror in hits like The Substance, Together, and Evil Dead, The Ruins deserves credit for how it handles its frightening concept.

In the film, two young couples are roped into a visit to a set of ancient Mayan ruins by a tourist to look for his missing brother. Once they arrive, however, they quickly discover that the ruins house a living vine that will stop at nothing to spread, even getting under the skin of a human being, forcing the tourists to literally tear themselves apart to remove the vines from their bodies.

'The Ruins' Makes a Silly Concept Terrifying

Image via Spyglass Entertainment

On paper, the idea of a killer plant seems incredibly campy and invites comparisons to Little Shop of Horrors, but how The Ruins presents this idea not only turns up the blood and gruesome imagery to 11, but affects the characters and the viewers psychologically as well. Watching people slice their skin open and amputating vital limbs is already an unsettling image, but the film takes it one step further by planting the idea that the vine could get inside anybody at any moment.

One of the characters in the film, Stacy (Laura Ramsey), becomes infested with the vine and is consumed by the thought that something else is inside her. Despite assurance from her friends that the worst is over, Stacy continues to hack her body to pieces with a knife and even accidentally stabs her own boyfriend to death. The idea of the human body being violated from the inside is so terrifying that it would drive anybody to do increasingly dangerous and horrific acts.

Not only does the vine affect the characters physically, but it gets inside their mindset as well, even making sounds echoing the voices of their friends, tricking them into hearing things that are not happening. Stacy hears the vine mimicking her best friend Amy (Jena Malone) having sex with her boyfriend Eric (Shawn Ashmore), threatening to tear the already fragile relationships between these people apart.

To make matters even more terrifying, unlike a slasher film, the threat of the vines has no face, no humanity, and no logic behind what it does. Stacy, Amy, and the others cannot reason with their tormentors, nor can they fight back against it. The film goes out of its way to hit home that these people have very little options and very little hope to survive.

A Body Horror Nightmare in Broad Daylight

Image via Spyglass Entertainment

But what truly makes The Ruins an unnerving experience is its presentation of the horror. Unlike most horror films, this entire film is set in broad daylight, which not only showcases the graphic violence, but again psychologically counteracts the horror by showing a picturesque landscape around the ruins where truly terrifying events are taking place.

With recent horror films leaning towards body horror nightmares and trying to twist the human body into a horror show, other films in this subgenre are being revisited as a result. At the time of the release of The Ruins, body horror was not necessarily a hot commodity in the horror world, but in recent years, films like Old, Lee Cronin's The Mummy, and Evil Dead Rise have delighted in twisting and mutilating people in horrific fashion. The Ruins also pioneered presenting horror in broad daylight, a technique that Midsommar sold itself on 11 years later.

As the subgenre of body horror continues to take off, The Ruins manages to age with grace and even feel ahead of its time. Crafting a dark, grisly and unforgiving survival horror with panache, Carter Smith's film has stood the test of time and deserves a place in the echelons of great horror. And hopefully, now that the film is on Netflix, more can discover the film and be truly freaked out.