Movie review: 'The Maze Runner' escapes its own mediocrity

Published September 16, 2014 9:43pm

Grant us victory and lasting peace

So that our running may not have been in vain

- The Runner’s Prayer

Part The Hunger Games, part Resident Evil and part Lord of the Flies, The Maze Runner manages to navigate through the dangers of retreading repeatedly explored storytelling paths in order to deliver a solid, albeit at times predictable, two hours of suspense and adventure.

Directed by Wes Ball and based on the novels penned by James Dashner, The Maze Runner opens with a mystery that shrouds a significant part of its running time (pun not intended). As bits and pieces of the overall puzzle are slowly revealed to the characters (and subsequently, the members of the audience who did not read the books prior to watching), the film inches closer and closer to being a rehash of events and twists that we’ve seen in Battle Royale and the long list of series it has inspired.

Thus, encounters and events meant to be shocking quickly become unimpressive and unsurprising, fates of certain characters rapidly become easy to predict, and twist after twist after twist easily turn into consecutive exercises in stopping yourself from guessing what happens next. Unfortunately, this also means that despite the cast’s best efforts to give the film a certain degree of emotional heft (from its overarching theme of autonomy vs. control to its many twists and turns), it does end up feeling a bit bland and unremarkable at times, as if it’s something we’ve all seen before.

Nevertheless, The Maze Runner is not without its merits. There is a spectrum of feelings effectively and rather surprisingly conveyed by the predominantly male cast – confusion, determination, complacency, resignation, desperation, and even cunning – and though these may not be fully represented by the film as a whole, these qualities are certainly evident in the characters themselves.

The player who truly shines is, without a doubt, the protagonist of the piece – Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), the center of the mystery and the key to unlocking the secrets of both the seemingly evergreen Glade and the maze that surrounds it. Other noteworthy performances include the sharp-browed Will Poulter’s take on the disturbed stickler for the rules, Gally, and the calm and collected leader of the Gladers, Alby (Aml Ameen).

The visual effects are nothing to scoff at, either. The ever-changing Maze evokes a sense of dread and horror, the latter of which is swiftly and brutally embodied by the Grievers - the pseudo-arachnid, techno-organic terrors that lurk within the dark corners of the perpetually twisting puzzle.

An adaptation of the first part of yet another line of books targeting the young adult market, The Maze Runner clearly has high expectations - and an end goal, most likely in the form of a possible film trilogy. Interestingly, a significant number of details and events from the book either did not make it to or were interpreted differently in the film. On one hand, it allows the movie to surprise even the moviegoers who are familiar with the source material; on the other, it might leave a bad taste in the mouths of hardcore fans looking for a more faithful translation from print to film.

Ultimately, whether it will go the way of the Twilight saga (which enjoyed four films - including a two-part conclusion a la Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - and box office blockbuster status, regardless of the story’s actual quality) or Percy Jackson (which was met with lukewarm reception and mixed reviews, and whose future as a close-ended trilogy currently appears to be as dead as the dinosaurs) remains to be seen.

For now, though, one can say that Thomas and his band of not-so-merry boys definitely earned their freedom from being regarded as merely another The Hunger Games clone, despite the ever-present danger of this genre film just running around in circles and never finding a way out of the trap of unoriginality. — TJD, GMA News

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