The Ruins, by Scott Smith

I liked A Simple Plan so much, I was really looking forward to The Ruins.  Boy, was I disappointed.  If you want to read a book where people are as dumb as plants and plants are as smart as people, The Ruins is for you.  This book has a lot of problems: the premise is silly (man eating plants with no explanation), too many characters with no strong protagonist, and a meandering structure with no clear plot points.  But the biggest problem is that the characters are so stupid.  The plot is weak because the characters are not proactively trying to get out of their situation.  They just react to the plant, and in many cases stupidly.  Who wants to read a book about people who act stupid to the point where they can't even try to save their own lives?   At about three-quarters of the way through the book, I started rooting for the plant to win and it actually got better!

Surprisingly, the movie was quite a bit better.  In the movie, the characters were much more proactive and the structure was better with clear plot points.  I'm surprised that Scott Smith wrote both the book and the screenplay.  If he knew enough to have a strong structure and proactive characters for the screenplay, why didn't he apply those principles to the book?