Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) wakes up in an ascending elevator. With him are
supply containers marked WCKD. When the elevator reaches the top, a door
above him opens and he's surrounded by a Lord of the Flies type gaggle
of young men/boys. Thomas takes off running, but stops when he realizes
he's in a small glade surrounded by huge walls.
Gally (Will Poulter) subdues Thomas and keeps him from trying to run into a maze which is accessible through a door in the wall.
The
leader of the group, Alby (Ami Ameen), and his consigliere Newt (Thomas
Brodie-Sangster) explain the situation to Thomas. Once a month the
elevator (or the box as they call it), comes to the surface with
supplies as well as a new boy. They all live in the glade and call
themselves Gladers. None of them can remember anything about their pasts
or why they were sent there, but after a few days their names come back
to them. Each boy is given a different job. Some are builders, some are
runners. A door opens in the giant wall every day and closes every
night. The door leads to a maze that surrounds the glade. Runners go
through looking for a way out. "If you're trapped in the maze over
night, the Grievers get you and you die". The maze changes every night.
Alby was the first boy to arrive in the Glade. No one knows why they're
there.
Thomas starts to form a friendship with the kid who came
up the month before him. He's one of the youngest of the group. His name
is Chuck (Blake Cooper).
That night there's a celebration for
Thomas. Gally is wrestling one of the other boys and asks if Thomas
wants to have a go. They end up sparring and when Thomas hits his head
on the ground, he remembers his name.
That night Thomas has a dream. It's full of fleeting images, but a woman (Patricia Clarkson) says, "Wicked is good."
Alby
takes Thomas around to show him more of the sites. The boys carve their
names on the wall when they arrive. When one dies, they cross off the
name. Thomas tries to fit in and he's given the task to go dig up
fertilizer from out in the woods. While he's there, he's attacked by Ben
(Chris Sheffield) one of the Runners who was stung by a Griever. While
they fight, the other boy says, "This is all your fault. I saw you. That
boy has what they call The Changing. A sting will apparently cause
tremendous pain and make you prone to violence. There's no cure for it,
so they force the boy into the maze at night just as the doors are
closing." Everyone is concerned that there was a Griever attack during
the day.
That night Thomas has another dream. It's more of the
lady assuring him that Wicked is good, but now he also remembers himself
and a girl about the same age sitting across from each other at work
stations going over diagnostics.
The next day, Alby goes into the
maze to retrace Ben's path and find out what happens. It rains during
the day. Now it's getting late and Alby still hasn't returned. All the
boys gather around the entrance to the maze. Just as the doors are about
to close, the lead Runner named Minho (Ki Hong Lee) appears with a very
injured Alby. Thomas rushes into the maze to help them, but the door
closes behind him.
Minho and Thomas use vines to suspend Alby's
body and try to keep it safe from the Grievers. Alby was stung while
inside the maze. One of the Grievers appears and chases after Thomas.
The Grievers looks like gigantic bedbugs with robot legs and scorpion
tails. Thomas and the Griever run around a bit as the walls in the maze
change. Finally Thomas is able to lure the Griever between two walls
that are colliding and SQUISH! Dead Griever.
The next day Gally
calls for a meeting of the Gladers. Most are excited that Thomas killed a
Griever. There's another group though, lead by Gally who feel that the
rules they have were put in place to keep everyone safe and ever since
Thomas arrived things have changed like Grievers attacking during the
day. And, speaking of things changing, the elevator arrives.
The
boys run out to check what the elevator brought. Inside are no supplies,
only a young girl (Kaya Scodelario). She looks up and says,
"Thomas...", before passing out. In her hand is a note that reads:
'She's the last one ever.'
Gally calls for Thomas to be punished
because non Runners are allowed in the maze. He doesn't like the fact
that the girl knew who Thomas was. He's scared that the elevator hasn't
gone back down since they took out the girl. Newt says Thomas can be
locked up overnight without any food and starting tomorrow, he's a
Runner. Gally is mad at his leniency.
A bunch of the boys go back
into the maze, which further upsets Gally, to look at the carcass of
the Griever. Inside it they find a weird device that has an electronic
display reading the number 7. The device also is marked WCKD. The boys
realize whoever sends them supplies also made the Grievers.
Minho
shows Thomas a map of the maze. There are different outer sections that
open each day as the maze changes. Each outer section is numbered. Last
night, section 7 was open.
The girl is awake. She's at the top
of a tower throwing stuff at the boys on the ground. Thomas yells up to
her that it's him. She agrees to let him come up. He explains that her
memory was wiped, but in a few days she'll remember her name. She says
she already remembers her name. It's Teresa. She remembers Thomas too.
He tells her that he's had dreams about her and a lady saying that
"Wicked is good." When Teresa woke up she found two syringes in her
pocket too.
That night, Thomas deals with his punishment of being
locked up. Chuck visits him and brings him some food. He also asks
Thomas to give his parents a little carved statue Chuck made. Even
though he doesn't remember his parents, he's sure his parents remember
him and miss him. Thomas gives back the statue and tells Chuck that
he'll be able to give that to his parents himself.
The next
morning Thomas and Minho go into the maze along with the device they got
from the Griever. The device ends up making clicking noises and guides
them to a new section Minho has never seen before. Minho is also
concerned that all of the outer sections of the maze seem to be open.
They get to a wide area marked WCKD Loading Dock that ends up in a dead
end, but the device turns from red to green and opens a new path. That
path leads to what looks like some sort of sewer tunnel. The edges of
the tunnel have the same slime that the Grievers secrete, so they go
back to the Glade.
Thomas decides to use one of the syringes on
the still changing Alby. It ends up making him better. When he comes to
he tells Thomas, "You were their favorite." But we don't find out what
he means because outside doors all over the maze begin to open and out
pour bunches and bunches of Grievers.
There's a giant Griever
attack that wipes out a bunch of the boys and destroys much of their
village. Alby is among the dead. Chuck is saved after getting grabbed by
one of the Grievers. They end up hacking off its tail. After the
attack, Thomas realizes that the venom from the Griever stings helps the
victim remember. So he takes the hacked off tail and stings himself. He
remembers a little bit more.
In Thomas' memory, the maze isn't a
prison, it's a test. He sees all of the other boys in incubation tubes.
A lot of them are in a panic. He also sees himself as a scientist along
with Teresa.
The Gladers use the second syringe and Thomas is
cured and confesses to everyone that he's one of the people responsible
for everyone being there. Gally is furious and he and his group tie
Thomas and Teresa to stakes outside the entrance to the maze as an
offering. But, half the group is still with Thomas so they free them.
Now the Gladers are divided.
Thomas tells Gally that he'd rather
die trying to escape than die in the Glade not trying. Thomas takes a
group into the maze. They get to the Loading Dock area from before and
are attacked by a bunch of Grievers again. They go through the sewer
tunnel type area and it leads to a locked door. Teresa needs a numerical
code to get through. They realize the code must be the sequence in
which the maze would normally open. She types it in and everyone goes
through a door. Walls crush all the Grievers behind them.
The
kids walk through some hallways until they find a door marked exit.
(It's seriously a regular old exit door like you'd find in any office
building). They go through and now they're inside the lab from Thomas
dreams and memories. All the scientists are dead. A video starts to
play.
The woman from earlier identifies herself as Ava Paige and
tells the kids that they don't remember this but there was global
devastation by something called the Flare. She was part of a
controversial group called The World Catastrophe Killzone Department
(WCKD), that believed that in testing the kids they could monitor their
brains and find a cure. While she speaks, behind her guerilla soldiers
rush in and start killing other scientists. She tells them she's glad
they passed the first test and reminds them that Wicked is good. Before
signing off, Paige shoots herself in the head.
A door opens
leading outside. Before anyone can leave, Gally shows up. He has a gun.
He says that they all belong in the Glade. He goes to shoot Thomas, but
Chuck jumps in front of the bullet. Gally gets stabbed in the chest with
a knife. Chuck hands the, now bloody, statue to Thomas and dies.
A
group, who looks like the guerrillas from the video, rushes in and
takes the kids outside to waiting helicopters. At first it looks like
they're in the desert, but we pull out to reveal that they're outside
what used to be a city. Buildings are destroyed and everything is
covered in sand. They fly over the maze and the Glade and no one asks
why the helicopters just didn't land inside the Glade and rescue the
kids there instead.
In the final shot, it is shown that Paige is
alive and wiping fake blood off her head. She says that the kids have
taken the bait. More kids survived than she anticipated. The Maze was a
success, and now "phase 2" can begin as the helicopter flies away to the
city of ruins.
