Film: The Maze Runner
Starring: Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario
Directed by: Wes Ball

Inability to end without setting up a sequel aside, The Maze Runner is the best YA adaptation to hit the screen in years.

I have never read The Maze Runner, but I am a firm believer that a film is truly good then I should not need to be familiar with its source material in order to appreciate the adventure it has to share. The Maze Runner begins with a boy being lifted on an elevator from deep underground to the Earth’s surface. He’s cold, wet, afraid, and hasn’t the slightest idea who he is or how he came to be where he is at that very moment. He reaches his destination to find a dozen or more other boys, all around the same age, living in a community they have built and maintained entirely on their own. The area in the immediate vicinity is green and filled with trees, but not far beyond that are walls–giant walls, truth be told, and they hold within them a deadly maze that is believed to be the key to the captured boys’ freedom.

There is no lengthy prologue to The Maze Runner, nor are there a half dozen side stories added to distract from the central narrative. There’s not even a love interest per se, but that is precisely what makes this film stand out from the pack of similar YA titles that have surfaced in recent years. The maze also helps, of course, but long before you get to that portion of the story the film works on mystery and originality alone. The universe in which the characters exist is beautifully realized, not to mention wonderfully rendered considering the extensive CGI needed to create the maze, and thanks to everyone having lost their memory prior to the beginning of the story there is very little needless exposition to slow the story’s pace.

Even better than the way the story of The Maze Runner is presented is the story itself. While there are mysterious and fictionalized beasts awaiting viewers in the film’s later acts, the heart of the story is riddled with messages of brotherhood and equality. The journey of our lead, Thomas, is the same as that of everyone else trapped within the maze, and it’s only through working together that they are able to get anywhere at all. This is a nice change of pace from similar genre titles, which tend to place the continued survival of the entire human race on the shoulders of one unique young person. This is the farthest thing from that. The stakes are far lower, and as a result they are also far more relatable. We have all felt trapped in our own lives, and we have all fought the instinct to ask for help because we thought we knew better. We have also all learned the hard way that curiosity sometimes has a price. The Maze Runner relays all of these lessons and more while simultaneously telling a story entrenched in science fiction.

The elements that hold The Maze Runner back are typically minor, but they are present nonetheless. Though the film clips along quite nicely, the second acts spends a little too much time deciding what the best course of action will be. You could probably trim ten or fifteen minutes off this section of the story and everything would play in a much more thrilling fashion, but as is, the film is in no way ruined. Additionally, the vast majority of the film’s more intense sequences take place either at night or in areas with many shadows. This may have been done to help improve the overall look of the creatures, which is a trick as old as monsters in movies, but it makes understanding what exactly transpires in these action scenes rather difficult. You know when someone dies, of course, but the regular back and forth between man and beast is executed in an incredibly sloppy manner when compared to the rest of the film.

I won’t go as far as to say that The Maze Runner made me look at the potential for YA adaptations in a new light, but it did give me a reason to not write off this peculiar genre of film altogether. The story is genuinely interesting, and the cast of relative unknowns make an unbelievable world seem like a place anyone could one day find themselves. The ending is little more than a pause before what will almost assuredly be an even more over the top sequel, but there is a sense of resolution to the journey, and that alone makes this adventure something special. I cannot say every teen will love it, but I think there will be a surprising number of adults who find themselves walking away with the hopes of picking up a few YA novels before the next film hits theaters in the coming years.

GRADE: B+

Review written by James Shotwell Follow @utgjames

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James Shotwell

James Shotwell is the founder of Under The Gun Review. He loves writing about music and movies almost as much as he loves his two fat cats. He's also the co-founder of Antique Records and the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. You should probably follow him on Twitter.

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