The blonde beauty gets battered in the new horror flick
Amongst the cast of DreamWorks’ horror movie The Ruins, Laura Ramsey has the most experience with the horror and supernatural having appeared in Venom and The Covenant, which may be why her character Stacy is put through some of the most grueling and gut-wrenching situations in the new movie from Carter Smith, based on Scott Smith’s novel. As one of five friends who try to survive after awakening a dangerous and deadly secret within the ruins of a Mayan temple in Mexico, the pretty blonde actress certainly seems to get the most face time in the trailer and clips as we see her put through a series of horrible things that are not for the squeamish.
ShockTillYouDrop.com talked to Ramsey during a quick series of phone interviews, which included a chat with her co-stars Jena Malone and Shawn Ashmore.
ShockTillYouDrop.com: I haven’t seen the movie or read the book so forgive me if I ask really dumb questions.
Laura Ramsey: No! No questions are dumb questions.
Shock: I tried watching some of the red band clips and they were pretty hard to watch, because you seem to be put through a lot in this movie.
Ramsey: I do. What’s interesting and what drew me to it actually was being able to go through all that, starting from an energetic happy-go-lucky girl in the beginning to this whole unwinding and unraveling and psychological downward fall. Being best friends with these people in the beginning and sort of through this life or death situation that happens, I kind of lash out at everybody and start to mistrust everybody. It was a good role.
Shock: So there’s a lot of psychological stuff going on in the movie that we don’t see in the trailers besides the physical stuff happening to you?
Ramsey: Yeah, it’s very psychological with everybody, to every character. When you put yourself in a life or death situation and you take away everything, like we didn’t have food in the movie, you don’t have celphones, you don’t know what you’re going to do and you’re put in a situation that is life-threatening, you start to either take control like the character of Jeff who thinks of everything realistically of how much water and food we’re going to need, and then you have the other people who just kind of follow along, and some people can handle it and some people can’t, and my character just tried in the beginning and then she has this thing that happens to her with the vine, so it messes with her head, and then she mentally loses control of her mind.
Shock: I don’t want to spoil anything, but is it safe to assume that the four of them do survive for most of the movie rather than being picked off one-by-one, which is usually the case with these movies?
Ramsey: Well, I think that⦠no, this is more of a collaboration as it’s all of us through the end. You have to see it to find out what happens in the end, but it’s not like normal horror movies where the first one and the second one dies. We’re all in it together until the end.
Shock: I think that’s different from the book, which is strange since the movie was adapted by the novelist Scott Smith, and he decided to change it. Did you read the book either before or after the script?
Ramsey: We did read the book. Before actually we started working on it, we all read the book, and it’s really actually similar to the book. The only thing that’s different really are the different situations that the characters take on, they take on different things than the book characters. It’s the same things, but in the book, Eric kind of loses control and loses his mind, and in the movie, Stacy does, so the same things happen, just to different characters.
Shock: Did Scott or the director want you to read the book before making the movie?
Ramsey: I think⦠yeah. We didn’t have to, but we wanted to know what’s the same, what’s different, what was so good about the book, because I know there’s a lot of fans of the book. It’s a great book. I just wanted to read it, because I was going to be in the movie of it, so I was like, “Oh, I better read it.”
Shock: What was the experience like shooting the film in Australia? I know that there are four of you who are the main characters there in there wild, so what was that like?
Ramsey: It was really great, actually, because we were there for three months, and it was the four of us, plus the fifth, Joe Anderson who played Matthias, and we all sort of have this pact together. We all became friends and we all had rehearsals together, and they put us on these crazy diets, like we call them the “Ruins diet” because when you’re put in these situations of no food, no water, you kind of want to limit yourself, even outside of work, kind of knowing what it feels like to not have food sometimes, and not have phones sometimes. Like we couldn’t have our phones on set because none of us got any service anyway, because it was so in the middle of nowhere, but we kind of all formed this bond and this relationship, because we’re all very focused people, and we just wanted to make a good film and really make it the best that we could. It was great, and especially being able to work with people who are very focused and take their job very seriously. I learned a lot while I was there from everyone that I worked with and the director.
Shock: Did you actually stay in tents on the location or did you just get driven out there every morning? Were you staying in the wild a lot?
Ramsey: No, not really. We worked a lot. You work sometimes 16 hours a day. We were out there a lot, and we had trailers, but we didn’t really go to our trailers. We were kind of the middle in this location in the middle of the rainforest and we got driven out there every day, and then when you’re done with work they take you home to where they put you up. We all had apartments on the water, which was amazing, on the beach. Thank God, because during filming, we were being brutally abused by so much.
Shock: What was the worst thing you were put through for the movie? Obviously, we saw a lot of it in the trailers, but was there anything too grueling to get through?
Ramsey: Every single day was a struggle for me. I only say that because my character goes through so much, that for me, that every day, I had to have the mindset, I could die. Through the movie, I’m either crying or lashing out or hysterical in some way, so it wasn’t great the whole time. At work, it was somewhat brutal for me.
Shock: So can you have any fun on a movie like this or is it a matter of just working and getting through the days?
Ramsey: No, of course there’s times where you laugh and certain things will happen that get you through your day, but a lot of it for this particular movie and being so focused, a lot of it was serious. I mean, we took it very serious, and even at lunch and everything after crying all day, you lose so much emotional energy you’re drained. Of course, on the one day we had off, on Sundays, we’d get dinner together and have fun and talk about the movie and hang out, but when we were working, we were working, and it was mostly serious because the first part of the movie, it’s all happy and fun, and we shot that scene in one week. From then on, it’s “Oh, god”, you’re faced with this life or death situation so the rest of the time, was like⦠we were crying or screaming, so you had to keep that mindset during work.
Shock: You and Jonathan Tucker are the horror veterans in the group, having done a few movies in the genre before, did you have any tips for Jena or Shawn about doing this type of stuff?
Ramsey: I think for this one, everyone kind of took it in their own way. They got to know their own characters, and acted the way they thought their characters would act, because each character is different. I think that we all just got through it together. We put ourselves in that situation and made it as realistic as possible, and compared to all the other horror films I’ve done, it was kind of hard because you really have to act that something is going to jump out at you or someone’s following you, but this is more realistic. How are we going to get off this hill? How are we going to perform a surgical procedure when none of us know how to even go there? It was more realistic in a way.
Shock: What do you have going on next? I guess you have a movie called “Street” which is more of an indie drama?
Ramsey: Yes, I have that. That right now is being sent to film festivals, so hopefully, something will happen with that. I played a girl who runs away from home and goes to Oregon and lives on the streets, because there there’s the highest number of street kids. It was cool. I got to transform, and I have like dreadlocks, and I totally don’t look like the same person, which is kind of exciting.
Shock: This is by a new director, York Shackleton?
Ramsey: Yeah, he’s directed a couple other things, but this is one of his first things, yes.
Shock: It looks like it has a pretty amazing cast. Did you get to work with all of them?
Ramsey: Yeah, it was amazing. Toby Hemingway, who played my love interest, he was in “Feast of Love” and he’s an up ân’ comer, he was good, he was great to work with. Vivica A. Fox, she’s very well known and it was great to meet her and work with her, and Theresa Russell, who played my mom, she’s been around for a long time. It was great to be able to work with people who have had so much experience in the industry you know? I’m still learning.
Shock: Do you have anything else coming up that might shooting soon?
Ramsey: Right now it’s in the works, I have a movie called “Whatever Lola Wants” that’s going to be at the Tribeca Film Festival, so hopefully will see that and it will come to America, because it was a film that was (made by) Pathé Films in Paris, so it was not American film, so hopefully America will see it. It’s very good.
The Ruins opens on Friday, April 4.
Source: Edward Douglas
