The DVD and Blu-ray discs of The Ruins (Paramount Home Entertainment, $35 and $40) sport the word ''Unrated'' in letters almost as big as the movie's title. But the only difference between this cut of the film and the one released to theaters in April is a three-second shot that doesn't add a drop of blood to the movie's already considerable gore quotient.

What the tiny tweak does is bring the story closer to the bleak spirit of Scott Smith's novel. Even if the filmmakers (including Smith himself, who wrote the screenplay) lost their nerve regarding the book's astonishingly grim finale, The Ruins remains a discomfiting and gruesome watch. All about the harrowing experiences of five young people vacationing in Mexico who step onto the wrong hill, the movie was unceremoniously dumped into theaters by Paramount Pictures without the benefit of critics' screenings, a tell-tale sign of a stinker.

On a commentary track accompanying the film, director Carter Smith and editor Jeff Betancourt don't say a word about the distributor's handling of their film. Nor do they discuss the original, more upbeat theatrical ending (which is included here as an extra feature), suggesting that they had nothing to do with the decision. They do talk at length about the changes the author made to his own book and how most of them wound up benefiting the movie. Not enough, apparently, for Paramount.

The Blu-ray disc beautifully captures the great Darius Khondji's widescreen cinematography, which relied almost exclusively on natural light whenever possible. Other extras included in both the DVD and Blu-ray discs include a featurette on the making of the film that includes an interview with executive producer Ben Stiller, another segment on the making of the movie's ''villain'' and a few deleted scenes that were removed because they momentarily broke The Ruins' relentless atmosphere of dread.

`BATMAN BEGINS'

Included as a bonus feature on the Blu-ray disc of Batman Begins (Warner, $29) is the opening prologue of The Dark Knight, which was shown in IMAX theaters last December. The sequence, a bank robbery that marks the entrance of the Joker (played by Heath Ledger), is shot in the no-nonsense style of a straightforward crime drama, and watching Batman Begins again shows how much director Christopher Nolan strove to stick to that realistic approach in the earlier film, too.

The Blu-ray disc includes a picture-in-picture visual commentary track that can be viewed alongside the movie, featuring interviews with all of the film's cast members and many of its behind-the-scenes crew. The disc also includes all of the considerable extras from the two-disc Special Edition DVD, although they are presented here in standard definition (boo!). The movie itself, however, looks super, with the Blu-ray handling the wide palette of blacks and shadows without a hitch.

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