Lord of the Flies Meets Lost

Rating: 7/10 (19 September 2014)

I saw "The Maze Runner", starring Dylan O'Brien-Teen Wolf_tv, The Internship; Will Poulter-We're the Millers, Son of Rambow; Kaya Scodelario-The Truth About Emanuel, Clash of the Titans_2010 and Patricia Clarkson-Friends With Benefits, Blind Date.
This is based on a series of young adults books by James Dashner-so you can look for a franchise. The story kind of reminded me of if you mixed the plots of the Lord of the Flies with the TV show Lost. The movie starts with Dylan as he wakes up in a moving elevator. When it stops, he is in the middle of an open field-which he finds out is called the glades-with a group of other young men standing around him. He has no memories of who he is or how he got there, just like the other boys before him-but after a few days, they do remember their own names-and once a month, a new boy arrives and the first boy that arrived there has been there for 3 years. Encircling the open field is a giant wall that Dylan later discovers is a maze. Every morning, an opening in the wall appears and then closes when the sun goes down. During this time, the boys send runners into the maze to try to find a way out, but if they do not make it out by sunset, they are never seen again. At night, strange noises are heard from the maze which is attributed to these sort of nighttime watchdogs called grievers, which are half robot, half scorpion monsters. Will is one of the earlier memory erased arrivals that does not like Dylan-he is always wanting to punish Dylan and gets disappointed when no one else agrees with him. Kaya is the first girl that arrives in the elevator-after Dylan-and she seems to know Dylan, if not much else. Patricia plays the person behind the curtain that seems to know exactly what is going on and why. The action is pretty good but the story left lots of questions unanswered, but I'm sure they are leaving them for the sequels. It ends like it is setting up the next installment. It's rated "PG-13" for violence and disturbing images and has a running time of 1 hour & 53 minutes. I enjoyed it enough that I would buy it on Blu-Ray.