The book and the movie are very different, more so than first appears. I saw the movie first and read the novel later, which meant that I read the book through a kind of movie 'filter', seeing scenes in the book how the moviemakers saw them. But there was a nagging feeling that I was missing something, so I read the book a second time. This time I noticed hints and subtleties in the book which suggest there is more going on than meets the eye.
Obviously, lots of spoilers below. I'm not going to block it in black because the then the whole post would have to be in black.
Firstly, in the novel it's not a Mayan pyramid. It's just a hill, with some old mine workings in it, there's even a bit of old minecart track with a minecart on it. I think this adds to the sense of failure and disappointment that the characters feel in the novel. They have come all this way only to discover that it's not even a proper archaeological ruin. It's just a hill.
Secondly, there's something under the hill, something alive. (The movie doesn't mention this at all.) When they are at the bottom of the shaft with broken-back guy, they keep getting a sense or feeling that there is something down there with them, something which is aware in some way, hidden but nevertheless still there. It feels like a sense of pressure more than anything. They don't get this sense from the vine itself. So it's something else.
Thirdly, the vine has different powers. In the movie, all the vine does is make trill sounds, move a bit, and eat people. In the book it speaks actual sentences in English and in German. They are new sentences that it has created, so it actually understands the languages, it isn't just repeating sounds that it doesn't understand. It recreates the smells of baking bread and apple pie when the teenagers are hungry, just to torment them. How does it even know what the smell of apple pie is? And it knows their names. When a character puts up a sign to warn people away, the vine pulls the sign down. It deliberately creates traps, and laughs when people fall into them. So we're clearly dealing with something way beyond what could realistically happen in nature, here.
Fourthly and finally, Matthias is different. There are hints through the book that he is weird; his skin is cold to the touch, he looks a bit ghostly. More importantly, it is mentioned at one point that he used to live above a bakery. This is mentioned in the novel a few pages after the vine has been making the smells of baking bread. So it is hinted in the novel (nothing more than that) that there is a connection between Matthias and the ruins.
What might explain all this? Here's what I think is going on, in the novel. Under the hill there is a supernatural entity, let's call it a demon. The demon uses the vine as its weapon. The demon has a human familiar, who has sold his soul to the demon, and this familiar brings fresh people to the hill so that the demon can torment and kill them. Matthias is the familiar.
None of this is in the movie. The movie is just a simple killer-vine story.
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