A Slow, Misdirected Sci-Fi That Fails to Emphasize its Strengths

Rating: 4/10 (22 September 2014)

A tribe of young men seek answers in a mysterious, synthetic environment. I enjoyed the setup, and the blunt ground rules of the world itself (we're surrounded by a giant labyrinth that seals itself and shifts mechanically every sundown - don't get caught inside when it does), but the cast is perilously dry and boring, so naturally we spend way too much time getting to know them. Dylan O'Brien is particularly bad as Thomas, a savior who pushes the complacent society to break out of their strongholds and pursue a method of escape. His is a special kind of anti-charisma, blank and wooden and static... stupid handsome, like an underwear model. Occasional jaunts into the maze itself are the real draw of this film, and clearly the most entertaining bits, but they're bafflingly few and far between. Why revel in the atmosphere when instead you could be setting up sequels with a set of fatally-flawed characters, I guess? Not that the plot is all that competent, either. Think too hard and you'll surely slip into one of the broad holes scattering its landscape. It's a middling effort in every sense of the word. Outside of the maze itself, which is a nice (if brief) breath of clear air, the rest of this film's concepts and ideas have already been done many times before, by more complete rivals. Even the CG-heavy monsters don't trigger a reaction - I think I recognized them from the lower levels of hell in Doom 2, circa 1994