Entertaining but lacks substance

Rating: 6/10 (13 August 2016)

The Maze Runner should have been an exciting and dramatic story of survival, however it ended up being a story packed with formulaic characters and little substance. Initially the story seemed intriguing, dark and clever, a group of boys forced to thrive inside a community known as the glade with no memories of their previous life. The glade is encircled by a deadly maze where man eating creatures, known as Grievers, dwell. The film began well as we were immediately plunged with Thomas into the ambiguity of the glade, tension between boys immediately started to rise, the unknown was exciting and the potential for the rest of the film seemed high. The overall cinematography throughout I thought was a real highlight to the film, after reading the books the maze was captured perfectly as the enormity of it portrayed it as a threat in itself even without the grievers. I also thought the design of the Grievers were effectively scary and very different. However the plot slowly unravels and becomes extremely vague leaving you very unsatisfied as many of the big questions aren't addressed until the end and are somewhat rushed and not particularly compelling. The lack of character development also annoyed me hugely, compared to similar recent films in this genre such as The Hunger Games or Divergent where the characters were complex, you loved some, hated others and felt empathy for them, I found myself lacking any emotional connection to any of the characters within The Maze Runner. The hero, Thomas, is your traditional good looking Hollywood teen hero who's actions were boring and predictable much like many of the others. The introduction of Teresa was very unnecessary, the typical arbitrary female who maintained perfect hair and makeup throughout and seemingly offered nothing to the plot. Although the film was action packed I felt the pace was all wrong for character development and key concepts from the book were missed out.