Good of its type

Rating: 7/10 (10 February 2015)

Good 'Young Adult' sci-fi mystery. Better than most YA movies adapted from books. A few expected clichés but, for the most part, it's a smart movie that doesn't lower itself to pander to an audience expecting more of the same they get from similar films. Perhaps most shockingly for a YA movie, there's no central romance. I am unaware of the books and the relationship between the main guy here and the girl introduced later in the film could very well lead to that in a sequel. But here romance is left out of things, which I found refreshing simply because of how tired and predictable that had become with these sorts of films. It's an entertaining movie with good performances and nice direction. I wish it could have been reworked into a complete story rather than stretched out into a series but I understand how the business works with these things. Still, that feeling of being cheated out of an ending so I'm forced to come back for part 2 is enough of a negative to drop my score some.