Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
The latest 'Maze Runner' movie succeeds well enough as derivative survival-horror-action thrillers go, but makes for an unsatisfying, confusing sequel.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
If it sounds like there isn't an original thought in The Scorch Trials' scripted head, you're right. But at least you won't be smacking yourself in the head trying to figure out what's going on.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
Maze Runner's action, suspense and twists give movie fans of all ages a chance to embrace their inner on-the-run teenager.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
To wait a movie and a half for a big reveal and have it turn out to be a zombie plague is like waiting until March for your Christmas present, and it turning out to be a three-pack of white Hanes T-shirts.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The material may be cardboard, but the actors do what they can.

Name : John Williams / Alias : New York Times
The many chases and ludicrous narrow escapes offer respectable doses of adrenaline.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
This time around, the kids have been turned into wind-up figures whose only function - taking the title a tad too literally - is to RUN!

Name : Kevin P. Sullivan / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The Scorch Trials wanders between YA cliches - there's a Resistance, but it's unclear what they're resisting - and zombie movie tropes, with the obligatory a zombie bit our friend scene.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
The movie may feel tonally consistent with the first, but it's also overlong and thoroughly routine.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
"Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" crams in more lore, supporting characters, backstories and motivations to the extent that it becomes difficult to get a grasp on anything.

Name : Katharine Pushkar / Alias : New York Daily News
Yes, these "Trials" go on too long. But they're never dull, and the kids are always good company.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
There's no flare of strangeness or freshness here, just a pile of images and ideas stolen from smarter people's second-hand bin banged into each other for a numbingly dull 132 minutes.

Name : Michael Sragow / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The first "Maze Runner" film was a wilderness saga refitted with robotic monsters. "The Scorch Trials" is a "Mad Max" film on foot.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
This story was better off back in the maze.

Name : Tasha Robinson / Alias : AV Club
After an hour and a half of mechanical 10-minute action cycles that start with, "Maybe we're safe now, for the moment," and end with "Aaaah! Run!" the pattern gets as wearying as the level of emotional brutality.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Director Wes Ball's film is a mad dash from one place to the next, with little time in between for rest, recuperation or plot development.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
The young leads lack charisma, and the veteran supporting players seem to be phoning it in.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Action overflows, some of it neatly staged but none of it telling us anything beyond "Go! Go! Go! Run! Run! Run!" Stay home, stay home.

Name : Andrew Parker / Alias : Globe and Mail
The sequel is terrible and all my original criticisms for the first film still stand, but at least it's a more entertaining kind of awful.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Essentially, The Scorch Trials makes up for the humdrum YApocalypse of its first half by going a little bonkers in its second.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
With minimal plot development and far too much running around in dark corridors, The Scorch Trials has a poor story:filler ratio. And much of what happens is poorly thought-out.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
It's exhausting, yet emotionally unengaging.

Name : Justin Lowe / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Lacks a . sense of originality and urgency, undercut by overly familiar characterizations and dilatory pacing.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
The teen dystopian franchise continues to play rough, and now even rougher, with satisfying results.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
After about 30 minutes of agreeably junky sci-fi that often exceeds the energy levels of its predecessors, the inevitable happens: Allegiant becomes a Divergent movie.

Name : Ben Croll / Alias : TheWrap
Brings back the same cast of characters to do more or less exactly what they did in the previous films, only this time in sets with more sci-fi gloss than postapocalyptic grunge.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
The worn and weathered third installment in the four-part film adaptation of Veronica Roth's postapocalyptic dystopian YA books.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
The closing shot is pure marketing, reminding us that the final installment is still a year away. If you feel like there's no point in going through the motions any further, I agree.

Name : Randy Myers / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
The second to last entry in what is a so-so franchise, "The Divergent Series: Allegiant" is squirrelly, chasing from one big concept to another without satisfactorily executing most of them.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
Divergent feels like a hasty idea scribbled on construction paper, crumpled into a ball, and ditched in a mud puddle. Even it can't tell what it wanted to say.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
Creatively speaking, if not financially, the Divergent series is less a franchise than a quagmire, an unwinnable war that nonetheless must be fought until the bitter end.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
Nuance, subtlety, feeling - anything that might help an audience relate to what is happening rather than passively experience it, like a roller coaster - apparently are luxuries this movie could not afford.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
It's a pretty dull picture, I must say, because it's my duty to say it. And it's a pretty dull picture, I must say, because something about its particular grade of dullness may cause memory loss.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
There's a lot of standing and talking, a lot of clothes-wearing (and even some doffing), and a lot of very loving set design. What there isn't is tension. Or feeling.

Name : Jordan Mintzer / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
More like redundant.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
A picture that crams elements of eugenics and dystopian fantasizing into a turgid sci-fi movie full of howling mobs, seemingly endless shoot-'em-up episodes, clunky-looking special effects and unconvincing relationships.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Allegiant exemplifies what happens when a book or movie exists solely for the purposes of placating fans and maintaining a revenue stream.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
This first half of the artificially split two-part finally may diverge from Veronica Roth's source material, but doesn't necessarily solve its problems.

Name : Connie Ogle / Alias : Miami Herald
The film moves jerkily, in fits and starts, squandering its promising setup and bogging down in explanation.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : Village Voice
These movies were never going to transform cinema, but watching Allegiant, it's hard not to feel as if someone has pulled the rug out from under an otherwise modestly entertaining franchise.

Name : Ariana Bacle / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Allegiant aches to be a thought-provoking, moving allegory of the current world. Instead, it's an unwieldy two hours too unintentionally silly to validate how seriously it takes itself.

Name : Julia Cooper / Alias : Globe and Mail
The movie desperately wants a sleek and goth-inspired aesthetic in the spirit of Rick Owens. What it ends up with is more of an unfortunate Anne Klein-meets-The Jetsons reality.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Miles Teller is brilliantly typecast as a mouthy douchebag that no one likes.

Name : Mara Reinstein / Alias : Us Weekly
Let's be Candor: This franchise is tumbling downhill at an alarming speed.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
This setup creates real anticipation about where the story might be headed, at least for those who haven't read Roth's books. Frustratingly, though, the movie devolves into a derivative muddle by the second act.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
As always, the narrative mostly goes: fight, save Tris, Four and Tris kiss. Repeat.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
A story that kicked off two years ago at a reasonable gallop has now slowed to barely a limp.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Because the series' plot reveal turns out to be more confusing than compelling, and because turning a novel into two films invariably leads to inflated productions, only the most devoted fans of the book will pledge allegiance to what's on the screen.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Except in the highly visual or action sequences, Robert Schwentke's direction has a peculiar quality, in which you can almost hear him yelling "Action" and "Cut."

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
The third and most useless chapter of the continuing sci-fi bloatfest called The Divergent Series.

Name : Bill Zwecker / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The special effects are among the more positive aspects of Allegiant, but those alone cannot rescue this highly flawed sequel.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
Woodley remains grimly committed, and Naomi Watts turns in a serious performance as our new, slightly more complicated villain, but the rest of the characters barely exist.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
With this hapless entry, even fans of the series will have their allegiance tested.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
If you think the name is inelegant, wait until you see the movie.

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
This penultimate installment in the dour dystopian franchise offers stronger visual effects and more thought-provoking biopunk notions about genetic engineering than the two previous films, but even star Shailene Woodley looks bored.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
egregiously padded piffle