The film contains relentless, often intense violence, including torture, gory images, drug use and some profane and crude language. Viewers of faith will note some vaguely Christian symbolism in “The Scorch Trials.” This ranges from the life-giving quality of the Gladers’ blood to the name of the aforementioned resistance force, “The Right Hand.” Yet these hints at spirituality represent mere incidental curiosities along the path of a largely unrewarding slog through a grim, terror-ridden future. Unwilling to be bled dry like their peers, the Gladers escape and take their chances outside in “The Scorch.” There they hope to locate, and unite with, a group of resistance fighters whose exploits have become mythical. Be mindful when sharing personal information, including your religious or political views, health, racial background, country of origin, sexual identity and/or. This so-called “flare” virus, named after the solar flare that scorched the Earth and destroyed everything in sight, turns people into flesh-eating undead types known as “Cranks.” It seems they have a natural immunity to the vicious plague that has devastated the world beyond the laboratory. The Gladers have something the Creators desperately need: their blood. The Gladers are now lab rats within the aptly-named “World in Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department” (WCKD). The vast labyrinth turns out to have been an elaborate initiation exercise organized by the so-called Creators. The narrative centers on a band of intrepid youth known as “Gladers,” who have escaped the mysterious maze of the title. Like its predecessor, “The Scorch Trials” is essentially a mash-up of “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent” - this time with a good dose of “Mad Max” and “Night of the Living Dead” added to darken the formula still further.

Unfortunately, most of their adult counterparts are evil and untrustworthy, which seems to be de rigueur for the young-adult genre these days. When our youthful heroes are not too busy running, they espouse the virtues of loyal friendship and self-sacrifice. Picking up where 2014’s “The Maze Runner” left off, the relentless pacing and nonstop action leave little time to decipher the convoluted yet unsubstantial plot, which is probably a good thing. (Oct.The forecast is bleak in “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials” (Fox). In any case, fans who are already hooked will gobble this down, particularly those who don't mind anemic female characters and a high body count. What is the purpose of torturing these kids? How is making them into killers ensuring the survival of the world? Why would government leaders name themselves WICKED? Hopefully answers are forthcoming in volume three. Though some facts are teased out, the narrative bogs down under the weight of unanswered questions.

As volume two opens, the boys learn they are infected with the 'Flare,' a virus that has killed millions and produced a population of nearly insane, disease-ravaged 'cranks.' New orders from WICKED, a coalition of surviving governments, have the boys marching across a wasteland toward a promised cure. In The Maze Runner, the teens, their memories erased, searched for a way out of a deadly maze their escape, led by Thomas, was short-lived. Hundreds of pages into this sequel to The Maze Runner, one of the teen subjects of a survival experiment on postapocalypse Earth wonders aloud, 'hat this is really all about.' Readers may be asking that, too.

Scorch trials