The Maze Runner (Wes Ball, 2014)

Another year, another 'young adult' fiction series to be given the film franchise treatment and it's tormenting teenagers for senseless reasons yet again in the dystopian future. One wonders whether this obsession is a natural consequence of being subjected the American school system.
Anyway, the boys here, an off-the-shelf assortment of ethnicities and stock personalities, have been trapped for years in a meadow in the midst of a foreboding maze filled with murderous yet boring machines and have duly divided themselves into the standard jock and nerd factions. Then their Jennifer Lawrence messiah figure turns up in the form of a feisty yet tearful boy who we are instantly told is 'different' for actually wanting to escape. Of course, there's some hazily cobbled-together nasty military-industrial entity behind it all, and the depressing promise of two more instalments of the same.

4/10