The Maze Runner (2014)
Certified: 12A
Duration: 113 minutes
Directed by: Wes Ball
Starring: Dylan O’Brien, Aml Ameen, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Ki Hong Lee, Will Poulter, Blake Cooper, Kaya Scodelario, Dexter Darden
KRS Releasing Ltd
Young adult literary dystopian future film adaptations are all the rage right now and Hollywood cannot seem to get enough.
Adapting James Dashner’s 2007 book The Maze Runner is an impressive cinematic effort and I imagine that its two sequels, The Scorch Trails and Death Cure, will also make their way to the screen.
Thomas’s (Dylan O’Brien) life has taken a decidedly unexpected turn. He finds himself placed in an unknown world, The Glade, which is filled with other boys who like Thomas have no recollection of how they ended up in this place. The Glade is superimposed by a huge maze that changes its configuration. Inside there are the Grievers, a hybrid type of creatures that are part animal, part machine.
The group of boys is led by Alby (Aml Ameen) who, along with his second-in-command Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), have built a type of culture that involves the fastest boys, known as runners, running into the maze and trying to understand what is happening or find a way out. By night-time, however, they must come out as the maze closes and no one comes out alive.
Thomas does not believe things should be this way. This brings him into conflict with Gally (Will Poulter), who feels that Thomas’s arrival has brought about a series of changes that could spell disaster. Meanwhile, Chuck (Blake Cooper) becomes good friends with Thomas.
Thomas ends up going into the Maze, saves Alby and kills a Griever.
The situation becomes more edgy when a girl named Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) enters the group and she has a note saying that she will be the last entrant. Thomas is now in a race against time to discover and solve the maze, especially as Gally and his group are out for a confrontation.
In his directorial debut, Wes Ball manages to envelop classic standards of the coming-of-age genre within this big mystery/puzzle that overshadows all the proceedings. This gives the film its drive. Having all the characters suffering from some sort of amnesia and delivering the idea there are invisible figures pulling the thread in this sort of game makes this an even more engrossing film experience.
In its own way, The Maze Runner is epic science fiction, where the production obviously has fun delivering snippets, false trails and information to both its characters and audiences. This is combined with a level of intensity in the drama, character interaction and the action sequences, especially the chase scenes which will have one gripping the edge of his seat.
The ending is not an anti-climax but rather a build-up to the next step as it sets the field for more sequels but without taking anything away from this picture.
At its core, The Maze Runner is a gritty picture. It’s a sort of modern Lord of the Flies with a sci-fi pasting and a sense of urgency and danger that are very palpable and should leave you breathless.