7/10

Thomas (Dylan O’Bryen) awakens to find himself and a bunch of other teenage boys trapped in a huge maze with very little chance of ever getting out. Who or what put them there remains the mystery in this young adult film based on the book of the same name. The Maze Runner was a pleasant surprise in an almost overflowing genre of young adult novels making the transition to film these days. If there is one thing that has driven me crazy about other films of this genre it’s that they aren’t done in brutal fashion. The Hunger Games shows violence, but it never seems like they are fighting for their lives while in the games. Divergent doesn’t capitalize enough on this being a post apocalyptic world with very little hope. The people in that film feel like they can make it through whatever as long as they have each other. In this film, these kids are fighting brutally against spider scorpion creatures in the maze, and fighting against each other as most of them lack trust with their pasts a mystery. I loved how the dark tones of this film created a presence where you could actually relate to what these kids are going through. The movie isn’t perfect and suffers from a lot of plot holes that become clear with the transition from novel to feature film, but i will get to that more later. Bryen is a really good young actor with a bright future in film. As Thomas, he brings a lot of personality to a character who is a blank slate due to all of the boys memories being wiped. The films mystery in itself as to why these teenagers are in the maze and who is doing it made me very intrigued heading into the movie. There is a decent payoff, but not one that is entirely satisfying. The movie definitely leaves the doors open for all three books to become films, and not everything is answered in this film which can be a good and bad thing. One of the biggest plot hole problems i had with the film is that this is supposed to take place after events of a sun destroying and burning everything including the earth’s ecosystem. So how does the maze have grass, trees, and vines if everything in the world around them is burned and sand filled? It is mentioned that they don’t climb to the top of the maze because vines don’t go up that high, so why not build a wooden ladder? They did this for the club houses they had at their home base, and there is plenty of wood to spare to make something like this. I don’t know if the book answers these questions, but the film didn’t, and it’s just one in the series of unanswered plot holes. That is the lone problem i had in the movie however. The rest of it was very entertaining and enjoyable. The monsters in the actual maze are very creative and original. They play as a spider, but have a robotic metal outer layer to them. The sound editing was also nothing short of brilliant. The background sounds of the maze constantly shifting while the characters don’t realize it and are talking to each other is very impressive. It’s those kind of small details that usually take me out of a film, but The Maze Runner did it’s homework. The action and suspense is also very noteworthy with the question always looming what character is going to die while in the maze. The film isn’t afraid to kill off a character regardless of their age, and i greatly appreciated it. This is not a film to be held down by a PG-13 rating. The film overall had kind a feel of three films to me. It felt like ‘Lord of the Flies’, ‘Cube’, and ‘Resident Evil’. This film takes the best elements of those three films and molds into one that is suspenseful and always darkly entertaining. I definitely recommend this film to everyone. I think even an adult crowd will get enough out of it without nit picking it to death. The Maze Runner is a superior entry in Hollywood’s onslaught of adolescents versus future dystopia films. It’s interesting, well acted, well directed, and delivers an original and mostly satisfying outcome