FLEEING FROM THE INESCAPABLE IN “THE MAZE RUNNER”

                Filmmaker Wes Ball, acclaimed for his kinetic powerful 8-minute short “Ruin” that had internet audiences blown away brings his dynamic filmmaking flair in the upcoming young adult movie “The Maze Runner.”

                Based on the bestselling book by James Dashner, “The Maze Runner” stars Dylan O’Brien along with a talented young cast – Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie Sangster,  Will Pouter, Ki Hong Lee, Aml Ameen, Alex Flores, Chris Sheffield, Dexter Darden, Jacob Latimore and Blake Cooper who are all trapped in a enclosed space known as The Glade.
“The Maze Runner” is the first book in the bestselling trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic world where a community of young men discover they’re all trapped in a maze.  When Thomas (O’Brien) surfaces from the bottom of The Glade, things have never been the same, especially when the last one and the only girl in the group followed after Thomas.   They all must work together not only to escape the maze, but solve its riddle and reveal the chilling secret of their entrapment.

                In the movie, the boys are surrounded by massive walls – industrial yet ancient in design, these chilling walls seem out of place in the wild forest where the boys are thriving each day.   Thomas, along with Minho (Ki Hong Lee) tries to go through the massive maze walls to try to get through an opening that will lead them out of the Glade.  But the boys who were there first warned them that nobody has ever made it out alive from the maze.  There’s something that preys on the ones that stay out too long in the maze.

                Director Ball cast a talented group of young boys who are all trapped, most of whom are content in the confines and safety of the glade until Thomas came questioning everything.

                Gally, played by Will Pouter whose film credits include “Son of Rainbow,” “We’re The Millers” and “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” is at odds with Thomas’ charging into the unknown.  His character, Gally is all about keeping things safe and normal so as to keep them alive.

                Aml Ameen, known for his roles in “Red Tails” and TV’s “Harry’s Law” is the father figure of the group.  The very first glader, he was the first one who taught himself everything there is to know to survive the glade.

                Arriving second in the glade, Newt, played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster (“Game of Thrones,” “Nowhere Boy,” and Ferb’s voice in “Phineas & Ferb) is basically Alby’s right hand.  Newt takes up the reins whenever Alby is not around.

                Chuck – played by Blake Cooper (“Parental Guidance”) “He’s this absolutely adorable kid. Sort of a little brother character,” Ball says. Chuck is younger and smaller than most of the other boys. He tries hard, and nobody expects much out of him, though he gets his hero moments.”

Running through the dangerous maze with Thomas is Minho, played by Ki Hong Lee (TV’s “The Nine Lives of Chloe King”) who doesn’t say much  but  runs fast, making him a very valuable part of the team for solving the riddle of the maze. “He’s the fastest, most bad-ass guy who goes out into the maze every day. He’s kind of a mysterious guy, but will eventually open up, too,” says Ball of Lee’s character.

The only rose among the thorns, Teresa is played by Kaya Scodelario (“Clash of the Titans”) who is probably the harbinger of doom because “all goes bad as soon as she turns up,” director Ball shares of Teresa’s mysterious character.

“The Maze Runner” opens September 17 in theatres nationwide from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.

The Horrific Consequences of Devil's Due

After Zach and Sam’s emotional wedding ceremony, they take off for a honeymoon in the stunning coastlines of Dominican Republic. From the stunning sceneries, their honeymoon suddenly takes a bizarre turn after an encounter with a psychic who warns them that “he has been waiting.”

Much to their surprise, after a night of copious quantities of alcohol, the newlyweds wake up with nary a memory of their honeymoon’s first night.

Upon returning home, Sam (played by Allison Miller) finds out that she is pregnant. Despite the surprising news, Zach (played by Zach Gilford) announces to family and friends that they are expecting their first child…unknown to all, it will be a nightmare that they have to endure since it will be the “Devil’s Due.”

“Devil’s Due” is directed by a quartet of young filmmakers known as Radio Silence who rose to fame via their films posted on YouTube. The film takes us to a series of head-spinning moments that Zach and Sam goes through dealing with an unexpected pregnancy. Soon, however, disturbing clues emerge that their situation is anything but normal: an ultrasound exam and amniocentesis take a troubling turn; on a grocery shopping expedition, Sam, a vegetarian, crams raw, bloody meat into her mouth; in a shopping mall parking lot, she cracks the rear window of a car with a strength and ferocity that doesn’t seem possible for a woman several months pregnant; and her belly seems to stretch and contort, as if the baby is pushing from the inside with extreme force.

Then, there’s a cabal of shadowy figures who begin spying on the couple from hidden cameras – as a malevolent spirit waits to be born unto the world. A film about a woman impregnated with…something powerful and evil, and dealing with the horrific consequences, has obvious narrative and thematic similarities to the classic horror film Rosemary’s Baby, directed by Roman Polanski. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett, two of the directors of “Devil’s Due,”, note that they don’t shy away from comparisons to the 1967 film. “Rosemary’s Baby comes up a lot when people see the trailer for DEVIL’S DUE, and it’s not something were afraid of,” says the latter. “We’re all huge fans of that film. We knew when we read [Lindsay Devlin’s] script that there was an opportunity to borrow from it in a smart way, but more importantly, tell a more contemporary and accessible story.”

“Devil’s Due” was filmed on location in the Dominican Republic, at Carnivale and various other sites, including a nightclub in a ruined catacomb, where Zach and Sam spend the fateful final night of their honeymoon. The production then moved to New Orleans, where most of principal photography took place.

Radio Silence embraced the typical scheduling constrains that befall some genre fare shot with “guerilla-style” filmmaking. “We felt like we had an abundance of time and money, just based on the films we’ve made in the past,” says Gillett. “The biggest challenge was getting people on board for how we wanted to make the movie. That becomes as much a part of the creative process as actually filming DEVIL’S DUE. For example, we didn’t need four hours to shoot a given scene because we didn’t shoot coverage conventionally. We don’t need to light things in a typical way because we’re trying to create realism. We wanted to get everyone on board with the experiment of jumping in and lighting to shoot 360-degrees and really let the actors discover the scene.

“Devil’s Due” opens March 19 in theaters from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.