The Maze Runner is the first novel in sci-fi author James Dashner’s trilogy. It’s also now a major motion picture with a sequel already announced.
This potential franchise in Hollywood’s blitzkrieg of YA novel-to-film adaptations, however, is essentially ABC’s Lost in movie form.
Both the film and TV drama are intriguing mysteries involving a group of people trapped in a world they — and we — don’t understand, and as their story unfolds it’s clear that the unknown is much more interesting than the known.
As part of the initial mystery, we’re introduced to Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) just as he wakes up confused and frightened on a metal freight elevator loaded with supplies as it bolts upwards through a dark shaft.
His memory erased, the tall and athletic teenager has unwittingly joined a three-year-old colony of other teenage boys in a walled-off paradise they call The Glade.
Every month a new member arrives and quickly falls into place among the colony’s work designations. But there’s something different about Thomas. For starters, he asks The Glade’s leader Alby (Aml Ameen) a lot of questions, including what’s behind the massive concrete walls. And for this, Alby is sure Thomas is special.
It’s through his query we learn the walls are part of a complicated and treacherous maze no one in The Glade has solved. Every morning, an opening in the wall appears, allowing a group of Maze Runners led by Minho (Ki Hong Lee) to enter and explore the labyrinth for an exit. By evening, however, the opening closes in dramatic slow-mo fashion, trapping anyone inside the maze overnight with creatures called Grievers that are fond of banshee-like wails. And while no one has survived a Griever encounter, the same walls that trap runners inside the maze also keep the beasts out of The Glade.
But it’s not just these monsters that strike fear in the colony; a strange and deadly disease occasionally infects members while inside the maze.
Given such dangers, the teens are mostly content to live in their Garden of Eden, especially the colony’s tough-guy enforcer Gally (Will Poulter).
But Thomas can only think of escaping this bizarre predicament, which doesn’t sit well with Gally, who is convinced Thomas is up to something. And after a mysterious woman arrives who calls Thomas by name, Gally is certain this portends even worse troubles for The Glade.
The Maze Runner is Wes Ball’s major directorial debut. Ball’s background is in visual effects and art direction, so it’s no surprise his film’s best asset is its look -- especially the walls themselves.
These enormous barriers of concrete, ivy, and steel are the most interesting character of the film; cold, moody, and dangerous, with a near-constant presence that often changes the course of the movie’s direction.
The Glade is also well conceived, as a Swiss Family Robinson meets The Lord of the Flies social order of wooden huts and towers amid grassy fields and a forest. Ball lets us properly ingest this strange and mysteriously barricaded habitat through lingering shots of the sunny enclosure and in the dimly lit sprawling maze.
The humans, however, aren’t so impressive. Most have single motivations and deliver dialogue so obvious it’s easy to mouth the words before the actors. And with little backstory to the characters — mainly because their memories have all been wiped — there’s little intriguing about Thomas and his fellow Gladers, other than the illogic of looking well-groomed with perfectly coifed hair in a world without showers, hair gel, and a stylist.
Beyond omitting such obvious lapses, what The Maze Runner needs — and the three screenwriters fail to provide — is a wicked sense of gallows humor to liven up the dire and dull predicament of the teens. It wouldn’t hurt to make us laugh once in a while.
Instead, the film relies too much on the power of its mystery to keep us entertained. But the deeper we go with the Maze Runner, the less interesting his story becomes.
Contact Kirk Baird at kbaird@theblade.com or 419-724-6734.
First Published September 19, 2014, 4:00 a.m.
