Movie review: The Maze Runner - lost and found

The Maze Runner, a dystopian thriller, is yet another addition to the lucrative young-adult film genre

It is no secret that Hollywood, like every other business, likes to milk a profitable idea. Although superhero and fairytale films have raked in a large amount of money, the two genres are expected to reach saturation sooner rather than later. Other genres, such as cinematic adaptations of graphic novels and fantasy books, have already been exhausted too. With the success of Twilight and Hunger Games series, however, you can probably mark ‘young-adult (YA) fiction’ as the genre Hollywood is going to cash in on next. With countless bestsellers that target adolescents, young adult books certainly seem like a natural choice for Hollywood.

Director Wes Ball’s The Maze Runner, which adapts James Dashner’s eponymous book, is certainly one of the better YA books brought to life. It is for the most part a watchable film, especially if you were a fan of the TV show Lost, or the classic dystopian novel, Lord of the Flies. The film also — quite deliberately I suspect — carries shades from The Hunger Games franchise.

Just like Lost, The Maze Runner grips viewers with its air of mystery. The film begins with the protagonist, Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), waking up inside an elevator, unable to remember his name. Here, in a grassy field called ‘The Glade’ that is surrounded by grim walls, he meets other boys, including Alby (Aml Ameen) who is the leader of the ‘lost’ boys. At the celebration honouring his arrival Thomas learns that every month a boy arrives in the elevator with no recollection of who they are. But they do eventually remember their name and Thomas learns his after getting into a fight with another boy.



The only way to escape The Glade is through an opening in the wall leading to the maze that mysteriously opens at sunrise and closes at dusk. Boys with the skills to navigate the maze are assigned the title of ‘Runners’ and they spend their days trying to find a path through the dangerous labyrinth. And those who don’t make it back to the Glade before nightfall are never to be seen again.

While The Maze Runner is enjoyable escapism for the most part, it suffers from the typical trappings of a film based on a YA novel. For example, many of the characters appear as stereotypical caricatures that are instantly recognisable from similar works of fiction. Even the dialogues suffer from a lack of subtlety and the film is a little too obvious in its attempts at setting up a lucrative franchise. That said, The Maze Runner is at times genuinely tense and features a cracker of an ending that is almost good enough to forgive the more tedious bits. If you can sit through another film about young adults revolting against an autocrat, then The Maze Runner may be certainly worth a watch.



Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, November 16^th, 2014.