FilmSnobReviews

Title: The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Wes Ball
Starring: Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster
Runtime: 2 hrs 12 mins

What It Is: Following the events of the first Maze Runner Thomas (O’Brien) and the crew of Gladers who escaped WCKD’s maze are now out there in the “scorch” of the world. Suddenly they are picked up by a mysterious organization. This organization’s facilities are run by a man named Janson (Aiden Gillen), but all is not sunshine and rainbows. This makes Thomas start to consider looking for the shadow army known as “The Right Hand”.

What We Think: This is nowhere near as bad as the original in regards to being deathly boring. No, the sequel isn’t boring at all. Instead, the sequel is unevenly paced and amateurishly executed. Dylan O’Brien could be a star here and he shines despite disappointing material to work with. There are a lot of talented actors wasted here not the least of which are Barry Pepper and Lili Taylor who are barely in this thing. Instead we get, as the title implies, a lot of people running. I myself, I was wanting to run towards the door during the films flat and uninteresting second act. This film lives off of it’s third act, just gorges off the damn denoument with the fervor of a starved animal.

Our Grade: C-, This is a similarly flawed film, in regards to HOW flawed it is. It is in no way the same. Much of this could be seen as exciting, but I just didn’t buy. This series for me is the second best of the big YA adapts happening now. Katniss Everdeen and her band of marry anarchists still top that list. This follows after, and the dreadful Divergent series is sadly still thing. Good god how bad was Insurgent I’m serious when I say I hope they just forget to make more of these.