Starring: Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Will Poulter, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Aml Ameen
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox
Runtime: 113 mins. Reviewed in Sep 2014
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Based on James Dashner’s young adult novel, The Maze Runner is the latest studio attempt to kick-start a series with Twilight, Hunger Games, Divergent popularity, longevity and financial return. While it suffers from inevitable common ground with other YA franchises and its groundwork in constructing a franchise is too transparent, it features a great cast, solid thrills and enough originality to get by.
A teenage boy awakes in a mysterious elevator rushing upwards. Reaching the top, the boy (Dylan O’Brien) is greeted by a group of other teenage boys in a large grassy paddock fenced in by colossal walls on all sides. The boy is distressed and confused, totally without memory – he tries to run and the others all laugh and watch him go, before eventually shutting him into a cage until he can adjust to his new location.
The leader of the boys is Alby (Aml Ameen), who eventually takes the new boy out of his cage and explains their plight – they were all sent up in the elevator, one month apart, over the last three years. They have a collective amnesia, but they remember their own names after a few days. They know not who sent them there, or why. Beyond the walls of their glade lies a maze, which is open during the day but shut at night, when creatures known as Grievers stalk and kill anyone unfortunate enough to be locked in the maze with them. Their community, known as Gladers, are self-sufficient and peaceful, though they send Maze Runners into the labyrinth every day to try and find a way out – unsuccessfully even after three years. The production design from Marc Fisichella is impressively organic, and the Glade has a very tactile feel to it (ignoring the very digital walls surrounding them), with shelters and other infrastructure woven and thatched from whatever vegetation they can obtain.
Eventually, our protagonist remembers his name: Thomas. Thomas is curious about the maze, but discouraged by Gally (Will Poulter) and Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster). The next day, Alby and the head Maze Runner Minho (Ki Hong Lee) are stuck behind the walls, with Alby stung by a Griever, and Thomas runs in to try and help them – he becomes locked in for the evening, and no Glader has ever survived a night in the maze. Using teamwork and smarts, Thomas and Minho save Alby and take down a Griever, emerging victorious and alive the following morning. The Griever design is terrifically frightening – imagine a carnivorous fly’s head on a non-descript body, melded with the robotic legs of a mechanical spider – and not something you would want stalking you through an endless maze late at night. On that note, ‘The Maze Runner’ is thematically and action-wise surprisingly grim, and perhaps not suitable for every youth in its intended audience. However, anyone mature enough to cope with the ‘Hunger Games’ franchise shouldn’t have a problem.
With the first Griever ever killed, Gally is worried that it will upset the balance of the Glade, and that whoever trapped them in the maze will react badly. He is correct, and that day, the elevator unexpectedly returns, this time bearing a comatose girl named Theresa (Kaya Scodelario) – she gasps Thomas’ name before passing out again. With Theresa in the Glade, the action picks up rapidly, and with Thomas elected to the position of a Maze Runner, the Gladers must overcome the challenges of the maze and their interpersonal tensions to get out alive.
The young cast acquits itself well. Television star Dylan O’Brien impresses in his first filmic lead, conveying Thomas’ difficult transition into a new life, and his physicality helps establish his natural leadership amongst the Gladers. The other young men, including Aml Ameen, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Will Poulter, Ki Hong Lee and Blake Cooper, are equally strong, particularly Brodie-Sangster as an intelligent, thoughtful source of audience information, Poulter as a vexed antagonist of sorts within the Gladers, and Cooper as a naturally weaker, younger Glader. Kaya Scodelario is a fine British actress, however her struggle with the American accent is unfortunately much more apparent than Poulter’s – no doubt she will be able to get some further coaching prior to shooting the expected sequel.
First-time feature director Wes Ball has begun the franchise with admirable ambition. Themes of friendship, redemption and sacrifice are packaged into a ‘Lord of the Flies’ type scenario, and his grasp of the source book’s darkness is clear. While the final scenes rush some heavy exposition somewhat clumsily (think the end of the first ‘Divergent’ film or the second ‘Hunger Games’), the first 100 minutes of the film are a pretty self-contained, exhilarating work. Decent special effects (again, the Griever’s are wonderful) and a menacing, suspenseful action-adventure score from John Paesano round out the efforts worthy of mentioning.
Another weekend at the box office, and another teen-centric franchise is hoping to find its feet (and audiences’ dollars). Thankfully, ‘The Maze Runner’ is one of the above average examples of the YA-fiction genre, and given the explosively open ending, I will be looking forward to witnessing the expansion they construct in the sequel.
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