Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials may bring a higher intensity of adrenaline rush and thrills, but it lacks the strong drama of its prequel about this dystopian saga.

After breaking out of a massive labyrinth inhabited by deadly hordes of giant biomechanical spiders, Thomas and his friends, known as the Gladers, face a grimmer world that brings them constant adrenaline-packed chases and thrills throughout the movie'€™s 131 minutes.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, the second installment of the youth-oriented dystopian saga, gives a great ride through zombie-like horror, which may remind you of The Walking Dead. The sequel, however, barely delivers the strong drama its predecessor did.

Some of the saga readers will be surprised about how much director Wes Ball and scriptwriter TS Nowlin deviate from James Dashner'€™s best-selling post-apocalyptic young-adult book.

The sequel picks up where Maze Runner left off, as masked soldiers save Thomas (Dylan O'€™Brien) and his fellow Gladers from the WCKD (World Catastrophe Killzone Department), which had erased their memories and put them into a gruesome maze with deadly creatures.

In the previous movie, the teenagers learned that the quasi-governmental scientific agency wanted to harness their immunity to the Flare, a virus that turns humans into zombie-like creatures.

The soldiers flew them away to a bunker run by Janson (Aidan Gillen), who provides food and warm beds to all the maze survivors. However, they have little freedom in the bunker. The teenagers have to undergo exhaustive medical testing and are interrogated by Janson.

Every dinner, Janson will give some of them '€œpromotions'€ to start new lives outside the bunker.

Thomas and loner Aris (Jacob Lofland), who arrived from another maze, found out that the selected boys and girls are strung up in a laboratory with tubes slowly draining their immunity fluids.

Realizing that Janson is in league with the WCKD, Thomas and his sidekick Minho (Lee Ki-hong) leads a jailbreak of the Gladers '€” impressively making their way out despite a group of armed soldiers guarding the bunker.  

They are now in the Scorch, a futuristic badland burnt by solar flares, but at least they have a good start. They survive a raging sandstorm and find an abandoned mall, where they can collect some clothes and water.

Then, the zombie-like terror begins, as the Cranks inside the mall wake up. The teenagers later find that not all of them are immune to the virus, resulting to the tragic death of one of them.

The remaining Gladers trek onward on their mission to seek refuge with the fabled guerilla resistance group in the mountains called the Right Arm Camp.

The journey brings them to Jorge (played charmingly by Giancarlo Esposito) and his courageous surrogate daughter Brenda (Rosa Salazar). Jorge presides over the pirate-like squatters inhabiting a multi-story edifice of scaffolding.

Deviating from his denizens'€™ intention to sell the Gladers to the WCKD, Jorge and Brenda help them flee as the WCKD attacks the compound.

As Thomas and the team face more obstacles on their journey, Teresa Agnes (Kaya Scodelario), the lone femme of the Gladers and Thomas'€™ love interest, suggests that they should better surrender and support WCKD'€™s mission to find the cure for the Flare rather just seek the hideout, which may be just an apocryphal illusion.

Compared to its predecessor, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials offers interesting visual diversity. From the ruins of a destroyed city covered in sand, to unforgiving sandstorms and thunderstorms.

From start to end, the film keeps throwing in appealing actions, in particular the nail-biting zombie chase scene with Thomas and Brenda inside a devastated skyscraper.

It becomes clear that the storyline, penned by TS Nowlin, paves the way for director Wes Ball, who directed the first installment, to create thrilling action. (Nowlin removes the telepathic communication between Thomas and his friends, which had been a key element in the book.)

However, the film offers nothing much about how the characters have evolved since the first installment. Minho has always been the boy that the group can count on in dangerous moments. Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) always serves as a critic to Thomas'€™ bold decisions.

The action-thriller-drama story is somewhat derailed by a weird scene with Thomas and Brenda taking hallucinogens and stumbling around a wild post-apocalyptic rave in the middle of the day. Minutes later, they are back on their mission and the rave party is forgotten.

Nowlin does not provide sufficient explanations about what happened before the Gladers break away from the maze that may leave some viewers, who have not watched the first installment, confused.

What the film lacks the most is emotional heft. There are not many meaningful talks between the boys. Teresa does not give convincing or touching arguments about her resistance against the Gladers'€™ plan to find sanctuary with the Right Arm Camp.

The fact that other teen survival sagas, such as The Hunger Games and Divergent, received astounding commercial success gives hope that Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials will gain similar success despite lacking that emotional heft.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials has enough action to keep the audience on the edge of their seats and tingle their bones with some zombie moments. Unfortunately, it ends with an all-to-familiar closure.

The teen dystopian film has high-octane thrills, but does not deliver the same emotional punch of its predecessor and that makes us wonder whether the movie would have been better if it had followed the book'€™s plot.  

However, the sequel manages to maintain the charm of the Maze Runner saga for when its final instalment, Maze Runner: The Death Cure, is released in early 2017.
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Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

Director: Wes Ball
Producers: Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen, Lee Stollman
Scriptwriter: T.S. Nowlin
Cast: Dylan O'€™Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Giancarlo Esposito, Aidan Gillen, Ki Hong Lee, Barry Pepper, Lili Taylor, Patricia Clarkson
Production companies: Gotham Group and Temple Hill Entertainment
Running time: 131 minutes

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