Boston-born actor Jonathan Tucker is probably best known to horror fans for appearing in Pulse and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes, and has also had supporting roles in Hostage and In the Valley of Elah. He’s now starring in The Ruins, an adaptation of the Scott Smith novel about a group of friends who discover something horrific lurking amid Mayan ruins. Words: Bryan Cairns.

Were you familiar with The Ruins novel before you took the part or did something else grab you about this project?

I had been sent [director] Carter Smith’s short that won Sundance last year called Bugcrush. I watched that and it is so disturbingly good and eerily sexy that it just kind of disturbed me in a really wild way. When I read the script for The Ruins, with all the people attached to it, I hoped they would be able to approach it with the same storytelling as the short.

With past credits including the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Pulse remakes, would you label yourself as a horror fan?

I have been blessed to have been working since I was 11. I think horror is an underrated genre. When done really well like in The Ruins, it pays homage to some of the stuff I really love in the 70s and incurs some of that energy the fanbase really wants to see. They really are a dedicated fanbase. It is important to give them the goods and not just rack up money.

Do you consider this version a reworking of the original material?

It is a very faithful adaptation of the book. You clearly cannot include the volume or depth the book has, but with Scott Smith’s script we were allowed to play around and have the naturalness that we were able to bring to it. It is a very good adaptation.

Can you give us some insight into your character Jeff? Who is he and how does he fit into this group of friends?

Jeff is a first year med school student and he’s with his girlfriend, his girlfriend’s best friend, and her boyfriend. It is the four of us and I am the practical one. I am also the one who is like, “Oh yeah. I enjoy being in Mexico and drinking margaritas but I would love to see what else is here. Maybe we could see some of these thousand-year-old ruins that just happen to be a mile down the road and we can get out of this American compound.” In doing that, it leads us down the road to failure.

Once things begin to spiral out of control, what kind of tough decisions do they have to make in order to survive?

Well, we don’t know why we are being kept up there so the first question is do we try and leave this ruin and risk being killed by these seemingly evil Mayans? Or do we wait it out there until help arrives? That is the first decision. As things start to get worse and worse, it becomes just about trying to survive in terms of food, water, heat, infections and broken legs.

How does Jeff fare under all that pressure?

Very well. As somebody who has ridden along in ambulances and performed basic surgeries in a classroom, he has seen anatomy and blood. He’s been in some pretty stressful situations and he’s doing his very best to put on a front that he knows what he is doing and what he is talking about.

Is there a large psychological element to The Ruins?

Certainly. It really is about four or five folks up there that are put into an extreme dire situation. These are real characters, real relationships, and you see psychologically how they handle this and how they change.

At the same time, there are some pretty visceral and shocking moments. You’ve gone down both the gore route in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and more PG-13 for Pulse. Which one works best for you?

This gore really works to serve a story…Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a horror movie done beautifully, but The Ruins isn’t a stereotypical horror. The gore is really truthful. The guy broke his leg and if he doesn’t get it removed, he is going to be infected and could possibly die. It is not bigger than life but it's life when it is big.

If you are going to go with it, you have to show that because it affects the characters. How can you not show how powerful amputating a leg is? It is really brutal but it is brutal for the four of us who have been forced to float or sink. For the most part, that was practical effects with all the cutting.

Did using practical effects for the vines help you get into a certain state of mind?

The vines they used to cover the whole temple and ruins looked extraordinary. They were all hand crafted and they were gluing hair by hair on the vines because there is a soft furry quality to them. They looked really nasty and it was very helpful to be able to see them. There really weren’t that many special effects for us where we had to imagine.

How did shooting on location in Australia instead of on a sound stage help service the situation?

The environment was challenging. You had absolutely brutal sunlight – but we shot in Australia’s winter, so when you are supposed to be sweating, hot and tired, you are freezing cold. There were a lot of cold nights. The extreme quality of the weather and being outside all day in a harsh exposed environment made it a lot easier. That is the simplest way to say it.

Did being confined to a remote area help you gel with your co-stars?

It is great being on location because if we were in Los Angeles, everyone would go home and do their own thing. Shooting in Australia, you are all together so it really helped serve the story, character and relationships there.

This is Carter Smith’s feature film debut. What kind of director is he?

He creates a very raw and disturbing environment and really allowed us to play in it. That is what you want from a director in a project like this. In post-production we were really allowed to play around, and that was incorporated into the script.

The Ruins is released in UK cinemas on 20 June 2008.