Review of The Maze Runner (2014) by Gamelore — 26 Apr 2015

Seems to be riding the wave of the "let's make a movie out of a series of books and target it to teenagers for some reason" craze that people turned into a thing after Harry Potter and possibly LOTR. The movie was actually halfway decent, with an interesting, shifting maze to explore, and a bizarre scenario in which the characters found themselves. Too bad the movie spent about 60% of its time focused on the encampment, rather than out exploring the maze. Also, I was very upset that we only got to see the characters learn and uncover secrets of the maze rather than getting to uncover the mysteries ourselves. Rather than present any sort of mystery to the audience for any length of time, it felt like we were quickly shown solutions to mysteries in hindsight, or in passing. The maze exploration was the best part of the movie, but only accounted for about 5% of it. Another 25% of the movie was action sequences that were also halfway decent, but didn't substitute for much less budget-intensive mystery, suspense or exploration.

The vast majority of the acting and drama was of a made-for-TV style and wasted frames of the movie; the black guy was the worst actor I think I've ever seen in a movie, using "black sounding" lines that felt forced and totally unrealistic: way too friendly for how little he knew the new recruit. Unrelatedly, at the end, as the group stormed the command center with only sticks and primitive found objects, they discover a massacre and handguns are lying in reach of the dead. Rather than, you know, upgrade from STICK to GUN, their primary concern is to gently kick the guns away from the dead. Oh yeah, that's totally what I would have done. It should have been a weapon upgrade shopping spree moment, but instead, it was the common "kick the gun away" routine / gesture on autopilot even though it made absolutely no sense for them to do that there. Then someone got killed.

I'd watch a sequel, though.