By: Quinn Newland

There are a lot of uncertainties with The Maze Runner. At the beginning, you may wonder why all of this is happening, where the story is going, but by the end, all you’re wondering is why the movie was even made. The Maze Runner is perhaps the worst case in recent memory of wasted ideas and talent.

The plot follows Thomas who wakes up in an elevator travelling very fast in an upwards direction. When it opens up, he finds himself in a walled off town-like area, called the glade. He soon learns that beyond the walls, is an area they call “The Maze.” Soon after he arrives however, things starting changing. Will he be the one to finally lead them to freedom?

Sadly, finding that out is not worth going to this movie. It’s just one disappointment and generic set piece after another.

Starting with the subpar acting, everyone here gives an absolutely wooden performance. It almost seems like even they knew the material was boring. The one saving grace of this movie, acting wise, is that Newt played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster. He adds some much needed brevity and believability to the film’s writing. Beside him, you can’t help but find yourself completely detached from the movie and its cast of characters.

Perhaps the worst offense this movie makes is its completely awful camera work. There are several scenes, especially the night ones, where you’ll have no idea what is going on. This is important for an action-thriller to have; they might as well just have not shown it. Not to mention that, overall, the movie just looks generic. The camera angles are boring and the special effects are nothing to brag about.

And the writing, oh my god, the writing. No wonder the actors seem bored; the writing has the most hamfisted and wooden dialogue I’ve seen in a YA movie so far. There is not a single twist you won’t see coming, not a single character death you won’t have called at least 30 minutes earlier. And the ending? I have never seen an ending that was more shoehorned in to set up a sequel.

There are of course some positives. The special effects are strong, if nothing too impressive, Brodie-Sangster’s performance is actually really impressive and believable, and the first act is relatively tense, if not all that enticing. These few positives do not, however, make the movie worth the price of admission.

What this movie suffers from msot is a lack of ambition. It seems like it would rather get as close to being like The Hunger Games as humanly possible so it can make a lot of money. This is disappointing because this movie had a lot of original ideas, and had they been executed well, we could have had the next big movie series. What we’re left with instead is a thoroughly boring and mediocre movie, and that almost makes it worse.