Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials grabs you from the get-go

REVIEW: All things Maze Runner grabs you from the get-go, but there is some excessive violence laced throughout this new film, making it lucky to get an M rating.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (M)

Director: Wes Ball (Beginners)

Starring: Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Aiden Gillen, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Giancarlo Esposito.

Rating: ***

The only way to beat the heat? Never forget to move those feet.

OK, so the Maze Runner franchise may not burn as brightly as other brands in the white-hot teenage-dystopia movie universe. Nevertheless, it is no danger of flaming out any time soon.

Last year’s quality opening instalment saw to that. That was simply a ripping little chase movie, no matter which angle it was viewed from.

By marking out its territory so decisively as a boys-ier, noisier cousin of The Hunger Games, the Maze Runner saga (based on the books by James Dashner) will never capture hearts or ring tills like Katniss Everdeen and company.

However, there is a sincere and straightforward modesty to all things Maze Runner that grabs you from the get-go.

Before we fully dig in to the new sequel Scorch Trials, just a word of warning: if you haven’t seen the first one, its successor will make little or no sense to newbies whatsoever.

It is best you double-back and catch-up on an arresting origin story at your own speed.

While picking up immediately where the original left off, Scorch Trials immediately alters its storytelling direction quite dramatically.

Change of pace ... Dylan O'Brien in Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. Picture: Twentieth Century Fox

The initial Maze Runner premise was dominated by a claustrophobic rat-race against time, and also an omnipresent enemy yet to reveal itself.

Now, in Scorch Trials, series hero Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) and his fellow rebel Gladers are no longer rushing about for dear life inside a confined space.

By the end of the opening act here, they have been let loose into the real world. Or, at least, what remains of it now that the planet has been ravaged by the dreaded Flare virus.

Just as importantly, Thomas and the Gladers (if that’s not a band name already, it soon will be!) can now put a name to the faceless entity that has been treating them like lab animals: the World Catastrophe Killzone Department (or WCKD for short).

Back when everyone was merely trapped inside the Maze, the need to survive outweighed any need to investigate why they were being put through this ordeal.

Trapped ... Kaya Scodelario, Dylan O'Brien, Ki Hong Lee and Thomas Brodie Sangster Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. Picture: Twentieth Century Fox

While remaining alive (and a step ahead of WCKD) is still the chief priority of all Gladers, their relative freedom as fugitives starts generating some revealing and disturbing answers.

The Gladers’ apparent immunity to the Flare virus, while not fully understood by themselves or WCKD, holds the key.

Complicating matters further for Thomas as a leader are some compulsory journeys across a forbidden region known as The Scorch.

These desolate, sun-crisped badlands have been overrun by Cranks, a zombie-like species that embody the Flare virus at its deadliest.

Towards the end of The Scorch Trials, proceedings as a whole come down with a slight case of “second-movie syndrome” (where the story loses both shape and flow while the filmmakers hastily construct a launch pad for the finale to come).

There is also some excessive violence laced throughout the movie that sees it very lucky to have been given a M rating here in Australia. (At the very least, parents of primary-schoolers should keep their children well away from this one.)

However, overall, this is a worthy addition to what is shaping as one of the better youth-centric series of its kind.

Originally published as Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials grabs you from the get-go