The Maze Runner
“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” one minor character asks the protagonist in The Maze Runner when he attempts a seemingly impossible feat. The same question could be directed at the movie itself.
As expected from a film that leaves teenage boys to devise a society of their own, The Maze Runner can be intense, even brutal and barbaric at times. Yet there are other moments when it embraces a more cliche horror-movie feel, and it serves up a healthy dose of humor, too. These lighter moments are unexpected — jarring, even — but they nonetheless set the film apart from the other popular teen dystopian films of late — films to which it will inevitably be compared.
The Maze Runner is overwhelmingly a movie that doesn’t know what its genre is. In addition to struggling to balance action drama with campy horror, it rides a blurry line between dystopian society flick and classic sci-fi film. What could be an interesting melding of the two instead becomes a film of fragmented sections that too closely resembles The Hunger Games in some places, Star Wars in others.
The film follows Thomas (Dylan O’Brien, The Internship) as he finds himself in a place called The Glade, the center of a giant maze occupied solely by teenage boys, each of whom was sent there as he was — with no memory of his past except for his name, no idea how or why he has been put there, and no clue how to escape.
Obvious Lord of the Flies influence aside, it is a compelling premise. And unlike most post-apocalyptic young adult books-turned-movies of late, the audience is spared a half-hour of exposition and thrown into the action with Thomas immediately, with questions answered along the way. It’s a nice change that not only immediately engrosses viewers, but keeps the movie from approaching an unnecessary Titanic-length runtime.
It is a true ensemble film, and it’s certainly no spoiler that more than a few characters fall along the way. But the cast of mostly fresh faces could very well be the future of young Hollywood, as they turn in some brilliant acting.
Much in the same way that Thomas is suddenly thrust into the maze, so too is O’Brien into a fearless hero’s shoes. The role stands in stark contrast to the everyman sidekick type O’Brien has perfected on MTV’s Teen Wolf and in his past few movie credits. It is perhaps because of this that he becomes such a worthy and sympathetic protagonist, a perfect audience surrogate. His transition from confused outsider to chosen champion is seamless in an art-imitating-life sort of way.
Thomas Sangster, likely best known for playing Liam Neeson’s stepson in Love Actually, doesn’t look as though he’s aged much in the 11 years since. Nonetheless, he’s come to adopt a commanding screen presence — among the ensemble cast, his performance as Newt is standout.
Kaya Scodelario of relative Skins fame plays Teresa, a lone female character. She holds her own, surprisingly without submitting to any action-movie female character tropes. While circumstances might easily lend themselves to the possibility of a love triangle — love octagon, even, (as these movies so often do) — for once, our characters put hormones aside and prioritize survival. Scodelario provides a much-needed feminine, even maternal, presence: a Wendy to the band of Lost Boys.
Everything builds to a hurried ending that leaves the audience with more questions than answers. Furthermore, it is a heavy-handed lead-in to a sequel that likely will be a very different kind of movie — a movie that, sadly, abandons some key components that make the first good (namely, the maze itself).
The capable young actors, O’Brien in particular, are poised for a rise to Hollywood superstardom. If a sequel can find a more concrete niche and provide audiences with more answers than its predecessor, The Maze Runner series could potentially rise, too.
