It's the only thing most of us remember from that 10th grade history class.
Human sacrifices.
Based off the principle of death to the gods, "The Ruins" follows four friends who discover an archaeological dig that's a bit more dangerous than a hole in the ground.
The State News took part in a conference call with "The Ruins" stars Jena Malone, Laura Ramsey and Shawn Ashmore to get the firsthand account of the gory film.
The State News: Do you feel "The Ruins" is genre-bending?
Jena Malone: Definitely. I'm really proud of the work and I feel like when I watch the film it's kind of hard for me to describe it to an audience. It's suspense, it's thriller. There are intense moments of gore that sort of turn into some sort of horror, but it's not any of that. It's also psychological and it's also twisted and it's also very simple.
SN: What prosthetics did you endure?
JM: I had to do a lot of blood work which was kind of interesting. At one point I was almost covered completely in blood - and you know it's not as fun as it sounds. It's actually quite a sticky, strange material that, as soon as you put it on the skin, every time you move your hand it feels like your skin is being ripped off of you.
SN: What scenes were particularly frightening?
Shawn Ashmore: Some of the scary stuff for me - and it wasn't even stuff that I was in - there's this idea of the girls (needing) to go into this dig site, which is an ancient Mayan tomb, basically. And some of the stuff when they go down there is absolutely terrifying to me personally. Because I was saying before, I'm kind of claustrophobic, so just being in this musty, dank, dark kind of place would scare the crap out of me.
SN: What funny things happened on set?
SA: I actually had a blast, like I really, really had a good time making this movie, but it was kind of like every day was life and death like you know, verge of tears hysterics. Laura, what do you think, was there anything like really, really funny?
Laura Ramsey: For me, I couldn't find anything funny because I had to be crying and screaming all the time.
"The Ruins" hits theaters today.