Ruin Me (2018)

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Alexandra reluctantly tags along for Slasher Sleepout, an extreme event that is part camping trip, part haunted house, and part escape room. But when the fun turns deadly, Alex has to play the game if she wants to make it out alive.

REVIEW: Ruin Me is the latest Shudder Exclusive to go up on the streaming service, and it's strangely below their usual standards. This one feels more like a SyFy Original or an Uncork'd Entertainment movie. It's more of a 'Horror-Lite' type movie, made for people just starting out in the genre as opposed to hardcore horror veterans that the streaming service is aimed at.

The plot is certainly interesting enough, and quite similar to another movie that came out over the last couple years, Fear Inc, where the characters don't know what's actually part of this immersive horror-themed game and what's real (if any of it), and the acting is surprisingly good from most of the actors, considering everything else here is not.


The script is totally amateur hour stuff, feeling like it was shot on a rushed first draft instead of letting it go through several more drafts of touch-ups to work on the horrible dialog or the shoddy flow of the film. There's no real scares to be found, either. There's lots of attempts, and like I said above if you're a newcomer to the horror genre you may find some of them slightly effective, but other than that there's not really much here that works.

The plot and trying to figure out what exactly is going on is the main source of entertainment with this one, but that really can only go so far when most everything else is done so poorly. And even that aspect is utterly ruined by the second half of the movie and especially that craptacular ending.


I usually enjoy Shudder Exclusives quite a bit, with even their worst ones being, at the very least, a 5/10, but this one just took me by surprise as to why on earth Shudder picked it up and endorsed it so heavily when it's so obviously below their usual fare. I really hope this isn't a sign that Shudder is beginning to get so desperate that they'll pick up almost anything.

3/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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