Maze Runner sequel taps teen anxieties
Dystopian series finale oozes with expected teen angst and clichés
MAZE RUNNER: THE DEATH CURE ★★ ½ out of 5 Cast: Dylan O’Brien, Aiden Gillen, Patricia Clarkson, Ki Hong Lee, Giancarlo Esposito Director: Wes Ball Duration: 2 h 22 m
It’s been almost two-and-a-half years since the release of the last Maze Runner movie, after an accident while filming the finale injured star Dylan O’Brien and shut down production for a year. Fortunately, O’Brien made a full recovery. Unfortunately, viewers may have a hard time remembering the labyrinthine story so far. Was it right-right-straight-left, or ...?
But all that you really need to know is that humanity has been stricken with a disease called
The Flare.
Not The Flair, which would make you look fabulous. The Flare turns victims into mouldering zombies. Thomas (O’Brien) is one of a group of escaped test subjects who were being used to find a cure. That work is still going on in a glittering, walled city run by a soft-spoken bureaucrat (Patricia Clarkson) and her trigger-happy head of security (Aiden Gillen).
Wes Ball, whose entire directing career comprises this trilogy, opens with an exciting scene of Thomas and friends rescuing their captive comrade Minho
(Ki Hong Lee) from a speeding train. (Between Murder on the Orient Express, The Commuter and Paddington 2, trains have become the go-to vehicle for action sequences of late.)
They manage to free a bunch of prisoners but miss Minho, which requires them to now storm the citadel.
Along the way they unexpectedly meet an acquaintance from one of the earlier movies.
“We watched you die,” someone says. “No, you left me to die,” he responds, a difference that has been lost on movie villains since the dawn of time, and has saved James Bond’s bacon more than once.
The Death Cure features neither a cure for death, nor a cure that requires death, but it does trade in a whole lot of “aren’ tthey-dead-yet?” action-dystopian-teen-movie clichés, including the unexpected ally, the “why should we trust you?” conversation, and our heroes having to make a leap from a great height, thus facing one danger to avoid another.
It pales in comparison to the 2014 original, which featured a tight-knit story and lots of actual running through mazes. But it’s an improvement on the weak middle chapter, which had nonstop action and little else. And it benefits from the sense of closure that only a this-is-it finale can muster. Granted, there’s a fair bit of teen-angst silliness at play, but you don’t go into a franchise called the Maze Runner without expecting a considerable amount of cheese.