THE MAZE RUNNER
DIRECTOR: Wes Ball
CAST: Dylan O’Brian (Thomas), Aml Ameen (Alby), Ki Hong Lee (Minho), Blake Cooper (Chuck), Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Newt), Will Poulter (Gally), Kaya Scodelario (Teresa)
CLASSIFICATION: PG 13
RUNNING TIME: 113 mins
RATING: 3 stars (out of 5)
Theresa Smith
A YOUNG boy is brought up to the surface by an iron cage elevator. He is amnesiac, confused and confronted by a group of more than 50 boys who assure him they have all gone through the same thing.
As friendly, Zen Alby (Ameen) shows him around, shell-shocked Thomas (O’Brian) is very curious about where they are, why they are there and he questions all the rules being thrown at him.
The glade they live in is hemmed in by a huge concrete wall with the only opening leading into a maze. The teens have carefully divided themselves into groups which deal with either food production or building, but Thomas is most fascinated by the runners – boys who map the maze.
This depicts elements of a young adult, post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie based on a novel, and it’s a dark future for this lot.
Such novels externalise the enemy, so they show the reader who the bad guy is and that beating him is a possibility. In The Hunger Games, it is President Snow who is the manifestation of the corrupt political system. Divergent and The Giver both give us the idea of conformity as a bad system.
Here, the bad guys are more nebulous. The runners come across evidence of monsters they call grievers, and we eventually see these monsters. But while they also talk about “they”, the nebulous people who created the glade, it is only once Thomas joins the group, that anyone shows any curiosity about who and why.
So, it’s an allegory for what? Being an adult means being trapped in a maze of debt, boring job, responsibility or degrading environment? Take your pick.
The youth are trapped in a confined environment with no way out, but there is a lot of supposition and assumption on the part of the audience because we immediately want to know who put them there, and why, and why Thomas’ appearance suddenly triggers all the questions when the amnesiac kids haven’t done that before.
Director Ball (Beginners) starts off slow, mirroring Thomas’ slow adaptation to his strange surroundings. Things pick up the pace as he starts to figure things out. By this stage, the strong actors have had enough screen time create real characters and we have a vested interested in seeing what happens to happy-go-lucky Chuck (Cooper) who used to be the new boy until Thomas got there. Or runner Minho (Lee) who wants to redeem himself after he cut and ran the first time he was faced by a griever.
Then there’s Gally (Poulter) who needs the rules to make sense of his reality and blames Thomas for all the crazy things that start happening.
The storyline gets a rather muddled once the boys are joined by the first girl to ever come up to the surface, and then it is explosions and screaming and, well, it’s the maze for this lot.
The nonsensical open-ended ending sets up the sequel, so forgive the cryptic remarks of the extreme plot dump, because it should be explained in the next film.
If you liked Ender’s Game or The Giver you will like this.