“The Maze Runner”, a young adult book-to-movie, is a film full of suspense, mystery  and adventure with many lives at stake.

This movie asks viewers to choose between staying in their personal space or being brave enough to take a leap of faith into the unknown.

“The Maze Runner” is about a group of teenageers trapped in a place called The Glade, the center of the maze, without any memories of their previous lives. Every month, each teenager wakes up in a caged elevator that comes with supplies. Some of them have been there for years and laid out some ground rules that were set up to abide by in order to live peacefully. The Glade is surrounded by huge walls that has only one opening which leads to the giant maze that closes during the night.

In order to get out of the maze the teenagers have to find a way to escape, so they send some runners to explore the maze. However, there are some dangerous creatures called Grievers that come out at night in the maze to hunt for food, meaning the runners have to come back before the maze closes every night. The runners have been doing this for three years, and still haven’t found a way out, until Thomas appears.

Janelle Johnson’s forum spent a part of their forum day watching this movie. “It was enough of spookiness and suspense that it was worth seeing the movie,” said Natsume Ono, a Community High School junior and member of Janelle’s forum. “And there were some scenes that were too dark to understand what was going [on].”

The casting of all the characters was spot-on, but there were several close ups, fast cuts, and blurry, shaky action when the “Grievers” appeared on-screen, so it was hard to understand what was happening.

Many of the questions posed earlier in the film, like “Who is Thomas?”, “Who sent him there?”, “What is the maze?”, and “What are the “Grievers” actually?”, didn’t provide clear answers or relied too much on the next sequels to answer them.

The development of the characters felt rushed so there was no emotional connection between the characters and the viewer.  In addition, there were no memorable moments or impressive action in the entire movie.

Overall, “The Maze Runner” is exciting at the beginning  but the ending was unresolved and some parts were left disconnected.

 Rating: B+