‘MAZE RUNNER’ SPRINTS INTO THE APOCALYPSE
So things really aren’t going well, not one bit. The apocalypse has more or less happened. Most cities are destroyed. And there’s a virus going around, and threequarters of the people on Earth are infected.
Oh, yes, and about that virus? It turns people into zombies — not literally, in a textbook definition sense, but zombielike, with a lust for flesh, poor dental hygiene, a tendency to attack in packs, to walk funny, have jerky movements and to show a certain exuberance in destruction.
Anyway, this is the world of “Maze Runner: The Death Cure,” the third installment in the “Maze Runner” trilogy, a kind of destitute man’s impoverished cousin’s answer to the “Divergent” series.
The first scene sets the tone, with its subtle blend of energy and fabulous stupidity. A team of young rebels interrupt a government transport. Apparently, one of their group, a young man named Minho (Ki Hong Lee), has been captured and is being taken to the last remaining city. And so, in a fairly exciting sequence — albeit one that depends on not a single government agent being able to shoot straight — the rebels disengage Minho’s train car and, using a hooked cable and an airplane, lift it into the sky and transport it to their base.
Just one problem: They steal the wrong train car. Oops. Though “Maze Runner: The Death Cure” lasts a full 142 minutes — every one of which, having spent, you can never get back — the situation it describes is a fairly simple one. The nonzombie contingent of the human race is dying out, and the remaining authorities are desperate to find someone whose blood is naturally resistant to the contagion. And so they are kidnapping likely candidates and bringing them to the city center for experiments in the hope of creating a vaccine. That entire train transport, for example, was full of young people being forcibly brought to the city for experimentation.
You’d think that screening people for the anti-virus would be a pretty straightforward process, but no. Instead, for reasons that are never explained, each person is tortured, strapped into a machine and forced to endure horrible and terrifying hallucinations. Understandably, the rebels want to rescue these young people from statesponsored torture.
All this creates a rather odd situation for an action movie, in that neither side has a monopoly on virtue. The authorities want to barricade themselves against the zombies, but that’s not so different from what the rebels want, to establish a cozy little colony of people immune or uninfected. Also, at least the government is looking for a cure. The rebels are trying to disrupt the research.
Yet there’s really little point in investing more thought in this movie than the filmmakers, is there? “Maze Runner: The Death Cure” was not intended as something to contemplate, but as a moment-by-moment proposition, and scene by scene, it’s not horrible. It’s not even boring. Led by a reasonably engaging cast — Dylan O’Brien as the rebel leader, Kaya Scoledario as a young researcher — this third installment gently swings from scenes that are mildly disappointing to others that are mildly diverting.
That doesn’t constitute a recommendation, but rather just expresses a certain relief that it could have been worse. Not much worse, but worse.