It’s this discovery that sets Thomas and his friends on their journey to find help and safety, which does feature some tense moments within individual action sequences and some striking imagery. (As in part one, the great Clarkson is sadly underused here so are fellow supporting players Barry Pepper and Lili Taylor in barely-there supporting roles.) At least that’s how Patricia Clarkson, as the crisp and efficient doctor Ava Paige, justifies such creepily devious actions. When Thomas and hoodie-wearing loner Aris ( Jacob Lofland) do a little middle-of the-night exploring, they stumble upon the nefarious medical experiments scientists are performing on these kids, all in the name of finding a cure for the plague that has ravaged the nation. That’s obvious simply from the demeanor of the guy who runs the joint, the turtleneck-clad, vaguely accented Janson ( Aidan Gillen). But then they-and kids who managed to escape other mazes-gather each night at dinner to find out which of them will be whisked away to a supposedly exciting new home.Ĭlearly, nothing good is in store for any of these people. They get food and shelter and clean clothes and actual beds at this new place, which sounds like a good deal. Along with a few others, they all find themselves stuck inside a different kind of compound at the start of the film, which picks up right where “The Maze Runner” left off. Teresa ( Kaya Scodelario), their only female companion, is mysterious and morose. Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) remains wisecracking and irreverent. His buddies from the Glade don’t fare much better in the characterization department. He doesn’t develop much of a personality along the way, though, even though we receive clues from his past that he has always been The Chosen One.

He’s the requisite rebel in this YA series, cut from the same cloth as Katniss in “ The Hunger Games” and Tris in “ Divergent” he’s the one who dares to shake up the status quo, challenge a cold, monolithic government known by the not-so-subtle acronym WCKD (i.e. The hero who emerged at the center of part one, Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), remains the quietly courageous leader in part two.

These adventures might be more intriguing if the characters involved in them had even a smidgen of depth. They walk across the desert by day, trying to survive the heat, then run across it by night, trying to escape lightning strikes. They’re skulking about an abandoned mall by flashlight, then slinking through a sewer system by flashlight. They’re under the protection of one untrustworthy adult, then another.

The characters are in one post-apocalyptic bunker, then they’re in another. Nowlin (who co-wrote the first film in the franchise) has an episodic structure that ultimately makes it feel repetitive. But while his characters are constantly on the run, it feels like they’re never really going anywhere. Returning director Wes Ball covers a lot more ground this time, literally and figuratively, in adapting the second novel in author James Dashner’s “Maze Runner” series.

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