Love the premise and execution

Rating: 8/10 (20 September 2014)

The Maze Runner is an exceptionally entertaining little movie that belies its origins as a young-adult story. It's one of those increasingly rare movies that make excellent use of such quaint amenities as setting and atmosphere to instill a real sense of panic, courage, determination, and fear in even the most disaffected teenager. It's tightly paced, with few logical inconsistencies to nitpick, too.
It all begins when Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) wakes up to find himself in a rapidly ascending elevator stocked with what appear to be provisions of some kind. When the elevator stops and the top is opened, he discovers that he's the latest arrival in an all-boys community that's at the center of a giant, ever-changing, complex stone maze. The boys, some of whom have been there for a long time, have established a pacifistic community that relies on those monthly provisions and their own hard work (building shelters, low-level farming) to survive.
But that maze. It's enormous and inscrutable. There are specialists, called Runners, who enter the maze each morning in order to map it and to try to find a way out. But if they don't return by dusk, the maze's stone doors will close, leaving the hapless teens inside for the night. And no one has ever spent a night in the maze and survived.
This is the ominous, bleak scenario with which young Thomas is presented. Alby (Aml Ameen), the leader of the crew, explains that there are only three rules in The Glade, that happy little faux-Paradise in which they all live: do your part, don't hurt another Glade resident, and don't feed them after midnight. Wait, sorry, that last one is from Gremlins. I meant that Gladers (uh huh) are forbidden to go into the maze. Well, unless they happen to be Runners.
So, once a month they get new supplies and a new young dude. But once Thomas arrives, things start to be a little different in the Glade. A runner is stung by a Griever (they're nasty robotic creatures who lurk in the maze) in broad daylight. Stings aren't good - they incapacitate the stung person and imbue them with violent tendencies. As such, he who has been stung is necessarily banished from The Glade, for the safety of the rest of the clan.
Thomas isn't like everyone else, as the somewhat-hotheaded Gally (Will Poulter, Chronicles of Narnia: The Dawn Treader) is quick to point out. Gally notices that things seem a little off since Thomas's arrival, and he blames the greenie for disrupting what felt like a little slice of heaven. But on Thomas's side are Alby, Alby's second in command Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), and the most-recent new blood, a young boy named Chuck (Blake Cooper), who looks a lot like Chunk from The Goonies.
Something has changed with Thomas's arrival; it seems that whoever or whatever is behind the maze's creation is changing the rules. For one thing, an unscheduled arrival of the elevator yields a new member for the group: a girl. The first one, in fact. It's Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), who appears to know Thomas from before their time in The Glade. Both Thomas and Theresa have dreams regarding their "before time" - again, unlike the others.
Thomas is acutely aware that the existence of the group in The Glade is not necessarily permanent, as evidenced by the attacking Grievers and the various infighting of the Gladers. Thomas wishes to find out more, and Gally simply doesn't, content to keep things as they are. This is the crux of the movie's moral issue - is it better to keep what one has, even if one has little and under repressive conditions, or to strive to escape those conditions on the hope of finding a better life elsewhere? Leaving aside the morality of having teenagers battle robot-animal hybrids (goodness knows we've seen plenty of movies about kids killing enemies or each other lately), the eternal question of why the boys and Teresa are even in The Glade lingers over them all. It's just that Gally and his small band of followers don't want to know the answer, and Thomas and his desperately do.
The action is fierce and creative. Even the battles with various Grievers are well shot (sometimes tough to do with robots, because with so much activity it can be difficult to discern what's what and who's who, particularly in a low-light setting), and the maze is something to behold - a real work of art, were it real. The acting is better than might be expected for a young-adult film, and O'Brien, Brodie-Sangster, and Poulter are each well cast.
It's obvious that The Maze Runner is intended to be a franchise - if it enjoys box-office success, of course. If this turns out to be another Golden Compass, then this may be the only Maze Runner movie we see. Which is a shame, because there are plenty of dangling plot lines at the end. Even so, the movie is exciting and persuasive and doesn't try to dumb itself down for the sake of its audience.