No rest for the WCKD…

“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 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询: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 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Hunger Games, sequel The Scorch Trials abandons its USP altogether – boldly opening up, for better and for worse, into s𝓡omething 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-apoc൲alyptic 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 lacki𝐆ng style or imagination. One stand-out shot, for insta♊nce, 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, comp🐼ared to other young adult effoꦐrts, 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 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询: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 a🍌s good as you want it to be.