A popular, young adult novel was adapted to the big screen last year, resulting in the enjoyable yet underwhelming sci-fi thriller, “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.”

The movie was directed by Wes Ball and is the second film in a trilogy based on James Dashner’s book series, “Maze Runner.” Starring Dylan O’Brien, the movie is an addition to the already popular and oversaturated genre of the post-apocalyptic dystopia, an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad.

It’s set in a world that is infected by a disease called the Flare virus that essentially created zombies. This world, though it bears similarities with our society, is merely the skeletal remains of the once thriving Earth.

The movie follows a group of teenagers as they run through a zombie-infested wasteland after escaping one of the only remaining organizations with power. The organization WCKD, World In Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department, rendered children and teenagers lifeless and empty in order to harvest their bodies for a cure to the Flare.

While “Maze Runner.” was a captivating and exciting thriller, it falls short in a few critical areas that would make it an otherwise good movie.

The start of the movie was filled with choppy rushed scenes that accentuated that were crudely adapted from the book, and there was little chemistry between the characters.

Though the action scenes were exhilarating, the plot was predictable and the dialogue was cheesy.

There was one scene in particular that made it hard not to roll your eyes, common for a moment so unbearably predictable and overdone appears in a modern blockbuster.

The film’s fault lies not in its poorly adapted screenplay or underwhelming plot development, but rather in its poor directing and adherence to the action movie formula that is dominating the modern movie screens.

“Maze Runner” compromises character development in an effort to push action and create an exciting experience rather than a good story.

Really, there are just a lot of scenes of them running.

Though “The Scorch Trials” was by no means a negative experience, it wasn’t well thought out, and felt rushed. It was a thriller we have seen before, but nothing more. It was a solid O.K.