20 Perfect Scenes In Otherwise Terrible Horror Movies

20. The Ruins - Stacy's Tragic Demise

Starting off, we've got a bad horror movie that could've been a great one. The Ruins, a killer-plant horror set on an abandoned Mayan temple, is based on a terrifying novel, and its marketing campaign made it look promising, but the final movie is a limp affair undone by a weak, poorly structured script and a fatal lack of the overwhelming psychological dread that characterized the book. 

Nonetheless, it does excel in the gore department, and there are some unforgettably grim images, most of all concerning the tragic fate of Stacy (Laura Ramsey), who is one of several people being quarantined in a temple overrun with carnivorous vines. The vines begin to get under Stacy's skin - literally. They start to invade her body, and one night, she sneaks away from the tent, taking a knife with her.  

When the others wake, they are greeted with the horrible sight of Stacy slicing herself open with the knife. She's partly flayed herself in her desperation to remove the vines, and it's a viscerally intense bit of body-horror that then takes a decidedly sombre turn when an almost-insane Stacy accidentally kills her own boyfriend with the knife. She then begs to be put out of her misery and is euthanized off-screen, thus concluding a powerfully nasty excursion into the grotesque. If only the rest of the film had been on this level.