James Dashner’s greatest gift as a writer is as a creator of propulsive, page-turning stories, and director Wes Ball gets that in his adaptation of Dashner’s novel. A teen named Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) emerges one day with no memories into a glade populated only by other teen boys, and surrounded by a massive, seemingly unsolvable maze. A solid cast of young actors—including Will Poulter and Thomas Brodie-Sangster—keeps things moving along even when the youths aren’t facing life-threatening challenges, but it’s certainly better when they are facing those challenges, including running for their lives from the deadly creatures called Grievers that look like bionic mutant scorpions. Things get more muddled the closer the narrative gets to explaining why the characters are where they are—and setting up the second book in the trilogy—but this is genre fare that’s smart enough to avoid the pitfalls of predictable romantic subplots to focus on a straightforward survival adventure. By Scott Renshaw