The Maze Runner (2014)
I came to The Maze Runner with my expectations set firmly to low. It sits on Letterboxd's "Top 250 Most Fans" list, which in my experience is often code for popular rather than good, and I had it filed away under interchangeable young-adult blockbuster, the kind of thing that gets a trilogy and a spin-off before anyone stops to ask whether the first one actually worked. So it is a genuine pleasure to report that I was pleasantly surprised.
The setup is straightforward enough. A group of teenage boys have built a fragile society in a grassy glade, hemmed in on all sides by a vast, shifting, lethal maze. None of them can remember how they got there. Into this arrives Dylan O'Brien's Thomas, fresh-faced and clueless, and the film uses his bewilderment efficiently to drip-feed us the world's rules. Wes Ball, making his feature debut here, handles all of this with a good deal more confidence and propulsive energy than I had any right to expect.
The DNA is easy enough to read. There is a spoonful of Lord of the Flies in the boys building their own rickety civilisation with its own laws and hierarchies, a healthy measure of The Hunger Games in the YA-dystopia packaging, and more than a whiff of Battle Royale in the "young people trapped in a deadly game" engine driving the whole thing. It is not, then, wildly original, and I will not pretend the plot bears much scrutiny. The underlying logic of the set-up asks you to switch a fair chunk of your brain off, and the more you poke at why any of this is happening, the wobblier it gets. But it moves at a real lick and doles out its mysteries well enough that, in the moment, I genuinely did not mind.
The cast is a mixed bag, and sorting through them is half the fun. Will Poulter is the pick of them, which surprised me, because I have generally found him a slightly grating screen presence, and yet that is precisely the quality that makes him such an effective little tyrant here, all bristling resentment and wounded pride as the glade's self-appointed hard man. The role fits him like a glove. Kaya Scodelario, sad to say, is the weak link, flat in a part that needed considerably more, and the film never quite recovers its footing in the scenes that hinge on her. The rest of the young ensemble do perfectly decent work, O'Brien included, holding the thing together with enough charm to keep you invested. And the effects are genuinely impressive. The maze itself is an imposing, convincing piece of design that lends the film a real sense of scale and menace, the kind of practical-feeling world-building that grounds an otherwise fairly daft premise.
I suppose what I am saying is that this is that welcome thing: a blockbuster with rather more going for it than its packaging suggests. It reminded me, a little, of the better end of YA storytelling, the kind that takes its young characters and their stakes seriously rather than just using them as window dressing for a franchise machine. It is derivative and it is daft, and neither of those things stopped me having a thoroughly good time with it. If you, like me, tend to stroll past this sort of franchise-starter with a weary sigh, it might just win you over.
Three and a half stars, and a much better night in than I bargained for.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2014 | Watched: 2026-08-22
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Disney Plus · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
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Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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