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maze runner the scorch trials movie review

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Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials Reviews

Unlike other YA franchises, the basic emotional underpinnings remain vacant in The Maze Runner movies, and the action isn’t good enough to keep our attention.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 27, 2022

Scorch Trials does not present any new themes or much character development but it does cement the concepts of truth and freedom that The Maze Runner introduced.

Full Review | Sep 13, 2021

Yes, there are the standard story beats to hit, but Wes Ball doesn't seem interested in simply hitting them and moving on. Instead, he wants to understand why something might happen and what the implications of it are.

Full Review | Jan 15, 2021

It's difficult not to compare this film to the numerous sources from which it clearly derives inspiration - and sometimes uncanny similarities.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 4, 2020

The Maze Runner is like an innocent new born baby and Scorch Trails is a blooming, daring adolescent.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 20, 2020

If you enjoyed the first film it's not necessary that you will enjoy this too.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 12, 2020

Cheesy, trite, and predictable, the sheer breakneck pace and frenetic energy is more than enough to whip the movie along and the result is an entertaining, if a bit overlong, teen-centric action flick.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 3, 2020

As a whole, The Scorch Trials is not a perfect movie. Nor is it a great one. But it is very good, and most of that has to do with director Wes Ball who wrangled derivative, cliched content into a thrilling, emotionally captivating adventure-gasm.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 30, 2019

Out of the frying pan, into the fire - the first film's promise is compromised here by a bloated running time; a transitional movie with lots of running and dust in the face, etc.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | May 4, 2019

If last year's hit The Maze Runner was the first child in the family - ambitious, concise - bridge film Maze Runner: Scorch Trials is very much the middle sibling in that it is changeable, desperate to please and generally all over the map.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Apr 18, 2019

An excellent sequel. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Feb 15, 2019

I look forward to the next round of scares and thrills.

Full Review | Jan 24, 2019

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials has everything one could ask from the middle of an action-adventure trilogy - it's brisk, it's clever and it's very well-made.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Dec 7, 2018

...a post-apocalyptic Young Adult-oriented narrative...For the second time around it is kind of a tough sell for Scorch Trials to get the obligatory mouse to chase after the cheese in this particular misplaced maze.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 10, 2018

Like the first film, it too often feels like they're making up the story as they go.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Nov 1, 2018

The Scorch Trials too often feels like just another post-apocalyptic worldwide zombie nightmare. But at least it's a mostly entertaining one.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 31, 2018

Better than it has any right to be, this middle chapter doesn't answer nearly enough questions, but is entertaining nonetheless.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 20, 2018

It is a true sequel, a film that cannot exist on its own terms, with nothing new to offer except more of the same.

Full Review | Apr 10, 2018

Wes Ball's sequel to 2014's The Maze Runner never slows down as its heroes sprint through a post-apocalyptic nightmare and keeps tension high at the expense of character development.

Full Review | Feb 7, 2018

The Scorch Trials fares best in its almost shockingly entertaining opening half hour...

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 18, 2018

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‘maze runner: the scorch trials’: film review.

Patricia Clarkson and Dylan O’Brien return for the second installment of the dystopian franchise.

By Justin Lowe

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Wes Ball ’s adaptation of the first book from James Dashner ’s Maze Runner young adult novels, about a group of teens consigned to a mysterious labyrinth, yielded a feature that proved it could compete for the same audience as the Hunger Games and Divergent series. The second installment, which reveals some of the reasons behind the teens’ imprisonment, lacks a similar sense of originality and urgency, undercut by overly familiar characterizations and dilatory pacing.

The conclusion of 2014’s The Maze Runner revealed that the teenagers known as “Gladers” were confined to their maze by the World Catastrophe Killzone Department ( WCKD ), a quasi-governmental security-scientific agency tasked with eradicating a viral plague that has killed off much of the world’s population and transformed many survivors into homicidal, zombielike “Cranks.” Confronting WCKD and exposing its oppressive policies becomes the teens’ primary mission in The Scorch Trials , but this imperative increasingly diverges from the realm of speculative fiction that forms the basis of the book series in favor of an action-adventure format that may not offer the same degree of wide appeal.

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Review: ‘Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials’ Pits Hardy Teenagers Against a Mysterious Organization

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By John Williams

Sept. 17, 2015

Science doesn’t yet know how many movies it will take to answer this century’s most pressing question: How will attractive teenagers survive the apocalypse?

“ Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials ,” the second in a series about a racially diverse but otherwise interchangeable set led by a hardy hunk named Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), throws us right into the action. Stiff, vague bits of exposition establish that the youths had, indeed, been in some kind of maze. Now they are in a large industrial compound, saved from a nefarious organization called WCKD by another mysterious crew led by Janson (Aidan Gillen), a transparently shady guy himself. The teenagers are among the only people left immune to a virus that turns humans into zombielike mutants that shriek like velociraptors.

Thomas discovers that Janson is stringing kids up, unconscious and riddled with tubes, for some reason related to the virus. That’s enough info for him to grab his friends and skedaddle. Their unlikely jailbreak sends them blinking into a blasted landscape of ruined skyscrapers and giant sand dunes, like some combination of Tatooine and Detroit, where they hope to survive long enough to find a fabled group of resistance fighters.

“The Scorch Trials” adds nothing new to the unkillable dystopian genre, but it’s at least less ponderous than its predecessor . The many chases and ludicrous narrow escapes offer respectable doses of adrenaline.

“What do we do now?” a weary character asks near the end. With one last rousing speech from Thomas, that’s obvious: Make a third movie, due in 2017.

“Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Occasional gun violence and fewer bad words than you would utter under similar duress.

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'Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials': Movie Review

Read all about the sequel to the "Maze Runner" series.

Jenny Gabrielle, from left, Dylan O'Brien and Rosa Salazar appear in a scene from the film, "Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials."

 -- Starring Aiden Gillen and Dylan O’Brien

Rated PG-13

Two-and-a-half out of five stars

This trilogy is getting trying.

For those of you afraid there would be no running now that the kids are out of the maze, don’t worry! There’s still running. A LOT of running. But now there’s running across a dessert! Running up a fallen office building! Running in a concrete prison! In fact, I would say the sequel to “The Maze Runner” has even more running than the original. Which isn’t exactly a selling point.

“The Scorch Trails” picks up right where “The Maze Runner” left off: The teens from The Glade have been “rescued” from the testing facility by a group of mercenaries, and flown to “safety.” The whole mission is run by Janson, played by Aiden Gillen, whom we think is there to help Thomas and other teens rescued from other mazes -- but come on. Anyone familiar with Gillen’s stellar work on “Game of Thrones” knows Lord Baelish isn’t to be trusted for a second.

Related: 'Maze Runner: Scorch Trials': 5 Essential Elements to Any Dystopian Franchise

Read: 'the visit' movie review, all abc news movie reviews.

Our hero, Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), is immediately suspicious upon being locked down in a new facility, while being told his fellow mazers are basically being sent to a farm to frolic in the sun with puppies. He knows they’re not, we know they’re not, and frankly, it’s weird they don’t know they’re not.

It’s one of many things that just don’t make sense here, and lead to questions -- so many questions, all the way back to the first film. Why did Dr. Ava (Patricia Clarkson) fake her death? How were the runners able to make such cool backpacks? And why did anyone go to such crazy, elaborate lengths to make the maze in the first place?

There are few answers to be had in “Scorch Trials.” We do learn more about the back story of Thomas and Teresa, and why young’uns are the key to curing mankind. But we don’t learn nearly enough, and that’s the main problem. The viewer must spend too much time trying to figure out why everything is happening, and not enough time enjoying the well-crafted chase and action scenes.

And don’t forget the zombies . There’s a lot more horror this time around -- the robotic spiders from the first film have been replaced by zombie-like Cranks, creatures transformed by the virus into horrifying living-dead mutants. They get a fair amount of screen time, though ultimately they’re more gross than scary.

Along with the horror, several other genres show up. Indeed, “Scorch Trials” feels a bit like a recipe: add a cup of “Walking Dead,” two glops of “Max Max,” a pinch of “I Am Legend,” a sprinkle of “Hunger Games,” a dash of “Alice in Wonderland,” and stir. And if that sounds disjointed, it is.

There is stuff to like here, though. The acting is solid, for the most part. The sets are visually striking. And there’s this odd theme carried over from the first film of life being precious at all costs so one gets left behind, which I find rather endearing.

But ultimately, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials leaves us with too many unanswered questions about this world, the virus, why they need to harvest teens, and OH YEAH, WHY DID THEY BUILD THE MAZE -- so many questions, I just can’t find much satisfaction here. Maybe the third movie will wrap it all up. But four hours into the franchise, my patience is wearing thin.

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Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials Is Shaky, But Eventually Finds Its Way

Last year’s The Maze Runner was a pleasant surprise — a young-adult adaptation that refused to overexplain itself, letting our uncertainty about its bewildering futuristic world mirror the characters’ own. In it, a group of amnesiac young men were trapped in an enclosed glade, with a mysterious and deadly maze as their sole means of escape — an intriguing dysbropia with an existential spin. But then The Maze Runner went and did something stupid: It let them escape from the maze. At the end of the film, our heroes stepped out into a fiery apocalypse, with futuristic soldiers and helicopters and whatnot all around the place. The stage was set for what would surely be a bunch of world-building, overinsistent sequels with little of the lean charm of the original.

Now the first of those sequels is here, and for much of its first half, The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials fulfills all of our worst fears about where this story would go (especially for those of us who haven’t read the original James Dashner YA novels). As the film starts, our protagonist from the first film, Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), and his companions Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), Minho (Ki Hong Lee), Frypan (Dexter Darden), Winston (Alexander Flores), and Teresa (Kaya Scodelario, the lone girl in their crew), get a brief glimpse of the wasteland that the Earth has become. Blasted cityscapes? Check. Zombies? Check.

Then they’re whisked away by WCKD (World Catastrophe Killzone Department), the mysterious organization responsible for putting them in the maze in the first place. (Militaristic, fascist plutocrats? Check.) They’re housed in a massive complex, where they join lots of other kids; there were apparently many different mazes. Occasionally, some of the kids are rounded up by WCKD and taken away — we’re not sure where to. (Human experimentation? Check.) Regardless, Thomas and his pals don’t want to wait to find out. They flee WCKD and head out into the Scorch, the aforementioned wasteland. It’s a deadly but thoroughly predictable postapocalyptic landscape: The rivers have become deserts. There are crazy lightning storms. (Environmental devastation? Check.) And more zombies. It’s an all-of-the-above sci-fi dystopia.

There’s very little development to these characters, which is probably okay for those who remember the original film well, not so much for those of us who don’t. O’Brien, who gave Thomas a likable desperation in the first film, here goes a little too often to his signature move: running with his arms flailing and his mouth wide open. And so, The Scorch Trials starts to peter out under the weight of its meaninglessness and sheer unoriginality.

But then, something happens.

Essentially, The Scorch Trials makes up for the humdrum YApocalypse of its first half by going a little bonkers in its second. We get underground, rat-eating, mutant root zombies. We get Barry Pepper with a Gatling gun. We get a demented rave that would make Saturday Night Live ’s Stefon proud. (“This one’s got green aphrodisiacs, zombies on chains, and Alan Tudyk in velvet.”) As our heroes discover others out there in the Scorch, the story loosens up and starts to have fun, with admirable assists from a series of terrific character actors. So besides the aforementioned Tudyk and Pepper, Giancarlo Esposito shows up as a wasteland pirate, and Lili Taylor as a resistance leader. Character actors collecting paychecks in YA adaptations are nothing new; a friend once called the Harry Potter series “a retirement plan for the Royal Shakespeare Company.” But they’re especially welcome in this case, because they make up for the film’s thin script and the younger actors’ mostly anonymous performances by letting their own personas fill the void.

Meanwhile, director Wes Ball brings the right level of energy, at least to the second half. Many of the action setpieces are derivative, to be sure, with echoes of everything from Transformers: Dark of the Moon to Terminator Genisys , but they’re effective nevertheless. And he seems to have grown as a choreographer of chaos since the first film, which was often incoherent when it came to chases and fights. Now he keeps things moving without forsaking clarity, which is all the more impressive given the far bigger scale of this production. The Scorch Trials isn’t a particularly good movie, but it’s just fast and nutty enough to keep you entertained.

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Review: ‘Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials’ is a wicked good game

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“Go!” That word shouted out in triplicate or quintuplicate is the refrain and credo of director Wes Ball’s “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials,” the breathless second chapter of the rare young adult fantasy series that can stand up to “The Hunger Games.”

The first “Maze Runner” film was a wilderness saga refitted with robotic monsters. “The Scorch Trials” is a “Mad Max” film on foot.

In last year’s “Maze Runner,” our hero, Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), arrived with his memory wiped clean in a colony of amnesiac adolescents at a wilderness outpost called the Glade. Thomas immediately sensed something off about the Glade’s location next to a giant concrete maze.

That sense is the closest Thomas comes to a superhero talent in this tough, unpretentious series, and he exercises it again in “The Scorch Trials.” It starts right after the first film ends, when Thomas led a few Gladers out of the maze and into a lab, where they learned via video from the enigmatic Ava Paige (Patricia Clarkson) that the World Catastrophe Killzone Department (WCKD, pronounced “Wicked”) had been testing them to find an antidote for a global cataclysm called “The Flare.”

The survivors are now hustled out of helicopters and into a subterranean bunker already filled with veterans of other mazes. There an ingratiating commander, Janson (Aidan Gillen), promises they will ship out in small groups to a new home where they’ll be safe from WCKD’s clutches. But Aris (Jacob Lofland), who escaped from another maze, soon convinces Thomas that these kids aren’t going anywhere, except into high-tech body bags. What ensues is a prison break followed by a nonstop chase, first through a devastated city and then through a desert so vast that the mountain home of a rebel army seems farther away the closer they get.

Ball and T.S. Nowlin, who adapted James Dashner’s book, never overexplain anything, including the teenagers’ status as “immunes,” the appearance of zombie-like creatures called Cranks or the extent of WCKD’s influence (“WCKD is good” is the series’ most piquant catchphrase). Thomas and company must crack these mysteries on the run, while gauging the value or virtue of some rococo supporting characters, notably the scavenging entrepreneur Jorge (Giancarlo Esposito) and his resourceful ward Brenda (Rosa Salazar), who use chained Cranks as guard dogs.

Thomas keeps his priorities straight by staying true to his band of younger brothers, and O’Brien grows into the role of leader without succumbing to bogus gravitas. He’s buoyant and urgent enough to hold his own in a cast full of scene-stealers, especially Thomas Brodie-Sangster’s hyper-alert Newt, and Salazar’s sly, sexy Brenda, who might be a better match for Thomas than his sometime soul mate, the distant and troubled Teresa (Kaya Scodelario).

The Gladers’ esprit de corps extends to the director. Ball’s go-for-broke enthusiasm enlivens conventional action-movie setups. What would escape sequences do without a convenient network of air ducts? Still, whenever a scene requires a precisely timed window smash or door slam, Ball and his cast overcome clichés with gusto.

Ball’s movie quotes are smart and evocative, including desert horizons out of “Lawrence of Arabia” and suspended bodies out of “Coma.” He’s keen on visual details: the ghostly swoosh of a white lab coat when air rushes in from a corridor, the grotesque profiles of bodies tumbling down sandbanks.

“The Scorch Trials” cannily exploits pop mythologies of the moment. If you’re up for an end-of-the-world adventure done with brio, take the film’s own advice and “Go!”

------------

‘Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials’

Rated: PG-13 for extended sequences of sci-fi violence and action, thematic elements, substance use, language

Running time: 2 hour, 11 minutes

Playing: In wide release

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Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

After having escaped the Maze, the Gladers now face a new set of challenges on the open roads of a desolate landscape filled with unimaginable obstacles. After having escaped the Maze, the Gladers now face a new set of challenges on the open roads of a desolate landscape filled with unimaginable obstacles. After having escaped the Maze, the Gladers now face a new set of challenges on the open roads of a desolate landscape filled with unimaginable obstacles.

T.S. Nowlin
James Dashner
Dylan O'Brien
Kaya Scodelario
Thomas Brodie-Sangster
516 User reviews
282 Critic reviews
43 Metascore
2 wins & 5 nominations

Top cast 80

Carl (Masked Man)

Dr. Crawford

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Trivia Originally the studio had a "wait-and-see" policy for greenlighting this sequel depending on how the first movie did. However, they decided two weeks before the premier of the first movie to go ahead and greenlight The Scorch Trials anyway as the publicity and reviews were overwhelmingly good.
Goofs When the Gladers are hung upside down over the pit, their hair and jackets hang down due to gravity. However, their shirts and T-shirts (which are not tucked into their waistbands) do not even though they are shown to be loose and bulky. It's clear that the T-shirts are being held in place by stage tape to prevent them from exposing the actor's midriffs and possibly covering their faces.

Brenda : [from trailer] I'm a Crank. I'm slowly going crazy. I keep wanting to chew off my own fingers and randomly kill people.

Alternate versions The UK release was cut, the distributor was advised that the film was likely to receive a 15 classification but that their preferred 12A classification could be obtained by making some changes. The distributor was advised to reduce moments of threat and 'horror' involving zombie-like characters, and to reduce the focus on injury in a scene in which a man is beaten for information. When the film was formally submitted, changes had been made and, consequently, the film was classified 12A.
Connections Featured in Annoying Orange: Trailer Trashed: Maze Runner: Scorch Trials (2015)
Soundtracks Walkin' After Midnight Written by Alan Block & Don Hecht Performed by Patsy Cline Courtesy of MCA Nashville Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

User reviews 516

So bad i couldn't even finish the movie.

bethaniebaker
Jan 20, 2018
September 18, 2015 (United States)
United States
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New Mexico, USA
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$61,000,000 (estimated)
$81,697,192
$30,316,510
Sep 20, 2015
$312,296,056
Runtime 2 hours 11 minutes
Dolby Atmos
Dolby Surround 7.1

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The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials Review

18 Sep 2015

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Maze Runner: Scorch Trials, The

The first Maze Runner dropped us right into the action and left us without resolution, beyond our heroes’ escape from the maze. This loose adaptation of the second book similarly dispenses with such luxuries as a beginning or end and just races with Dylan O’Brien’s Thomas and his friends as they run from the mysterious WCKD organisation, the genuinely scary, zombie-like Kranks that roam the burned-out Scorch and the gangs of the desert fringes. There are Spielbergian nods, colourful characters – Giancarlo Esposito is an eccentric gangster and Alan Tudyk runs a nightclub for the terminally decadent – and thoughtful moments amid the mayhem. So while it’s a woefully incomplete middle chapter, at least it’s never boring.

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Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials review

Maze runner: the scorch trials writes the book on throwing away the book.

Big-screen adaptations of popular book series tend to follow a pretty traditional formula. In most cases, they hew close to the source material – particularly the first film – and tend to play it safe when streamlining the story in order to get from one key plot point to the next in the shortest running time possible. It’s a proven strategy that appeals to both the books’ established fanbase and – the studio hopes – newcomers.

That’s why the Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials is such an anomaly. It offers up an exciting adventure that has little in common with the book that shares its title.

The second installment of a planned trilogy based on James Dashner’s Maze Runner novels, The Scorch Trials continues the saga that began with a group of teenagers trapped in a mysterious labyrinth, only to escape and find themselves in an even more dangerous, post-apocalyptic world. Uncertain who to trust after making their way out of the maze, the group of survivors led by the enigmatic Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) now find themselves on the run again in a ravaged world full of new, terrifying threats.

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All of the running in terror leaves little room for quality time with main characters.

The Maze Runner director Wes Ball reprises his role behind the camera for the sequel, and the young cast of returning actors is joined by some familiar, adult faces this time around, including Game of Thrones actor Aidan Gillen, Breaking Bad ‘s Giancarlo Esposito, Oscar-nominee Patricia Clarkson ( Pieces of April ), Firefly actor Alan Tudyk, Emmy-nominated actress Lili Taylor ( Six Feet Under , The Conjuring ), and 61* star Barry Pepper. Franchise screenwriter TS Nowlin also returns for The Scorch Trials after co-writing last year’s The Maze Runner .

The tagline used in marketing materials for The Scorch Trials is “The maze was just the beginning,” but a more appropriate description of the film might be “Run for your life.” In much the same way last year’s Mad Max: Fury Road seemed like one long, explosive car chase from beginning to end, The Scorch Trials is a frantic sprint for much of its 131-minute running time.

From the opening moments of the movie until the credits roll, The Scorch Trials careens from one chase sequence to another with various cast members sprinting, climbing, or otherwise fleeing in terror from agents of the mysterious organization WCKD, zombie-like “Cranks” affected by the savage “Flare” virus, and other dangers. Fortunately, it does a nice job of making each sequence feel unique with some impressive set pieces.

One particularly memorable sequence has O’Brien and newcomer Rosa Salazar ( Insurgent ) climbing through the interior of a crumbling skyscraper that’s leaning precariously against another building across a wide avenue. They’re pursued by several Cranks whose advanced stage of the virus has transformed them into savage creatures, and the pair must navigate an MC Escher-like environment of warped staircases, walls, and ceilings within the fallen tower.

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All of the running in terror, however, leaves little room for quality time with main characters.

Despite the presence of the aforementioned familiar faces, their characters receive precious little screen time in The Scorch Trials . Esposito and Gillen are the lone standouts of the newcomers, and while Gillen’s much-too-brief role doesn’t allow for much nuance as the smarmy villain, Esposito makes the most of his time on screen with some fun, compelling moments that make his character one of the most interesting of the bunch.

Some genuinely thrilling, entertaining elements help make up for the lack of substance.

The same balance – or more accurately, imbalance – of action vs. character development holds true for the returning cast. The film’s creative team seems to assume that the first installment of the franchise provided all the backstory and development necessary to carry the core characters through to the end of the franchise, and spends little time with any survivors of the maze that doesn’t involve running and a lot of shouting (while running).

Given how quickly things move, this lack of balance only tends to be a problem when the film asks its audience to have an emotional reaction to particular, character-based plot points (i.e., deaths or unexpected shifts in good-bad alignment). Instead of eliciting the intended drama, the break in the action just serves to remind you how little you actually know about the characters.

Still, there are some genuinely thrilling, entertaining elements in The Scorch Trials that make up for the lack of substance beneath all the action. Given how far the story veers off the path of its source material, there are also quite a few surprises for fans of the books – which can be a good thing if handled the right way.

The conclusion of the film feels a little anti-climactic given all of the chaos leading up to it, but The Scorch Trials still manages to leave you wanting more when the credits roll, just as any trilogy’s middle-chapter should.

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Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials review

No rest for the wckd….

GamesRadar+ Verdict

Rather than Maze Runner 2: We're Gonna Need A Bigger Maze, Scorch Trials ambitiously opens up its world with mixed results: gripping action, so-so script.

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

“The Maze is one thing,” slurs Aidan Gillen's Janson, the actor's Irish accent crackling through the American, “but you kids wouldn't last a day out in the Scoooorch.”

He's not totally wrong: the huge, monstrous labyrinth of last year's The Maze Runner – where a group of boys (and girl) found themselves trapped with no memory – is indeed gone. And in its place is... well, everything. Unlike fellow young adult franchise The Hunger Games , sequel The Scorch Trials abandons its USP altogether – boldly opening up, for better and for worse, into something entirely different.

Out of the maze and into the fire, it picks up right where we left off: with Thomas (Dylan O'Brien), Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) and the other 'Gladers' on the run from shady organisation WCKD (World Catastrophe Killzone Department). Having escaped their lab, and sinister, Littlefinger-esque enforcer Janson, they venture out into a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by solar flares: where cities are now ruins in the desert, and a disease has rendered most of the population berserk, screaming zombies. This is the sprawling Scorch, and it looks beautiful.

Free of the Maze's claustrophobic self-containment, returning director Wes Ball runs wild; there's barely a sequence here lacking style or imagination. One stand-out shot, for instance, has the group walking in silhouette over a sand dune, only to halt from a distant gunshot (an infected friend preventing the inevitable).

The action scenes, too, are urgent and masterfully paced; especially one involving a zombie attack in a mall, which builds ever-so-slowly to a grisly reveal likely inspired by cinematic videogame The Last of Us (the zombies even sound like its Clickers). In fact, compared to other young adult efforts, this is, overall, far more grim and gory.

Even so, such momentum works hard to mask a flimsy and unfocused script (adapted from book two in James Dashner's YA trilogy). Action is one thing, but the film also needs a better-developed sense of mystery – as well as a deeper exploration of character relationships and a wit that goes beyond tired lines like, “well, that doesn't sound good.” Not necessarily deal breakers, and the Empire Strikes Back -esque ending does up the dramatic ante.

Yet when the dust settles The Scorch Trials is, as we're repeatedly told of WCKD, “good” – just not as good as you want it to be.

Stephen is a freelance culture journalist specialising in TV and film. He writes regularly for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the i, Radio Times, and WIRED.

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Kaya scodelario, aidan gillen, nathalie emmanuel, dylan o'brien, patricia clarkson, rosa salazar, thomas brodie-sangster, ki hong lee, giancarlo esposito, katherine mcnamara, images (14), screen rant review, maze runner: the scorch trials review.

The Scorch Trials maintains the semi-successful bar of intriguing movie escapism set by The Maze Runner.

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