Lisa ( Gaia Weiss ) wakes up in a strange, enclosed space that looks like a huge maze of sewer pipes. A bracelet with a timer is fixed on her arm, which inexorably moves to zero. All she remembers is how she got into the car with a stranger who generously offered to help her. Now she is stuck in a scary place with many deadly traps. To get out of here, she will need perseverance and courage, otherwise Lisa will face the fate of other prisoners – a cruel death in the flames of fire.
What is the movie “Meander” about?
The film begins with the fact that the main character Lisa decides to commit suicide. The young woman is bogged down in her own past and sees no prospects. She just lays down on the road and waits for a car to hit her. At the last moment, the heroine changes her mind and moves away from the road.
An approaching vehicle stops. A man named Adam persuades Lisa to drive to the nearest town. A conversation ensues, during which unpleasant aspects of the past of both emerge. At some point, the signs of a man wanted for committing serious crimes are announced on the radio. According to the description of the tattoo in the form of a cross on her arm, Lisa recognizes the killer in her fellow traveler. She has nowhere to go. A fight ensues, the car brakes sharply, and the woman hits the windshield.
After the events described, the heroine loses consciousness. She wakes up in an incomprehensible closed room from which no way out is visible. She wears strange clothes and a glowing bracelet with a timer. Suddenly a door opens, from which a narrow corridor is visible.
Lisa finds herself in a terrible labyrinth, which she has to crawl through. Among other things, death traps lie in wait for her at every step in the form of falling ceilings, acid pools, slamming grates, barbed wires, etc.
From time to time, she finds corpses, indicating that someone else was trying to get out of here. Despair is quickly replaced by a desire to survive at all costs, find a way out and regain freedom.
Over time, the heroine begins to better navigate the maze, gets used to traps and monsters and stops panicking. The desire to live to discover hidden physical reserves that Lisa never knew about. Fears, feelings of loneliness, past and future – all this becomes less relevant. The main thing is to survive, and in order to do this, you will have to overcome yourself, cope with all fears and complexes and learn to instantly respond to any changes in the situation or space.
If you hesitate even for a second, you can die from a suddenly closed door or be eaten by a monster. Lisa quickly accepts the rules of the game, which helps her successfully overcome all the new challenges, moving from one room to another and hoping to reach the end at some point.
“Meander” plot explained
The action of the picture takes place in a closed space. The tension is growing every minute. The first few shots give the impression that in the film The Maze Runner, the point of the plot is reduced to showing the process of survival.
The audience, along with the heroine, experience various emotions – from oppressive loneliness, claustrophobia to increasing horror with every minute. These sensations are enhanced by camera shooting and sound effects.
Interesting! The original name of the film “Meandre” in French sounds like “bend”, “winding”. But the Russian translators slightly modified the title, adding “running”, despite the fact that the heroine has to crawl for most of the film.
By the middle of The Maze Runner, the meaning of what is happening in the film becomes clear. Some details from Lisa’s past are revealed, the death of her daughter and the feeling of guilt that does not let go of the heroine are told.
From this we can conclude that the labyrinth is a testing ground for those who decide to commit suicide. Those who successfully pass it get rid of suicidal thoughts and a chance to love life again.
To find an explanation for the ending, you need to close your eyes to all this alien-fantastic tinsel. At first glance, the plot of the film is banal. Some visitors from distant corners of the galaxy kidnapped the heroine and placed her in a labyrinth. The fact that such a structure was built by some cunning maniac, to whom Lisa got into the car, can be discarded. Firstly, Adam himself turns out to be a hostage of the labyrinth, and secondly, the technologies shown here are clearly unearthly.
However, a logical question arises here – why? What exactly did those aliens achieve by putting people in a maze. The answer is simple – nothing! This is just a pointless passage of a looped route with a single exit. At the same time, participants are treated, niches are thrown up where you can hide and wait out the flames. Therefore, in my opinion, maniacs and aliens can be excluded.
What’s left? And here is the most interesting. There are not so many characters in this story, so the labyrinth is the work of Lisa. More precisely, her subconscious.
Let’s go through the plot points that reveal the meaning of the film.
Start
Here we first see Lisa, who is lying on the road. She is very worried about the death of her daughter, because, apparently, the girl fell out the window because her mother left her unattended. Here she meets with Adam, who turns out to be a maniac. Further darkness and a labyrinth. However, already in the labyrinth, Lisa, with the help of the assistant doctor’s skull, remembers how she fought with Adam. She even remembers the light from heaven. However, apparently, the girl just became another victim of the killer, and that light in the sky is a reference to the luminous corridor, which is remembered by many people who survived clinical death.
Man
Why didn’t he die in the fire? Because the consciousness of the main character did not allow this. For her, Adam is the embodiment of evil, which is why the scorched monster is chasing her in the labyrinth.
Other dead
Lisa heard about Adam’s victims on the radio. It was these victims that her imagination completed, moving into the labyrinth of the subconscious.
Hints
By a fatal coincidence, the clues that helped the girl find the right path are very similar to the tattoo of her killer.
Daughter
Lisa blames herself for her death, so she cannot let go of her daughter’s soul, fearing that, having come to terms with her death, she will lose her forever. The labyrinth is looped, and Lisa passes it, only turning away from her daughter. This is the key moment of the entire film. After all, the heroine finds herself in a kind of trap: having died, she loses the girl and her memories of her. However, there is a way out. Having let go of the child’s soul and purifying her own, Lisa enters Paradise.
From these moments, the explanation of the end of the film “The Maze Runner” is formed. All encroachments in a confined space can be attributed to the nooks and crannies of the memory of the main character. She dies at the hands of Adam, and these images flash in her mind. However, she can’t just leave. She must first let go of her daughter’s soul. And she does it by choosing a different path. Here, falling knives are very appropriate, which seem to cut off the entire earthly existence of the main character. You can also pay attention to the white room, where Lisa sees frames from her life. After all, there is an opinion that before the death of a person, his whole life flashes before his eyes.
Having released her daughter, Lisa leaves the labyrinth of her memory and moves to freedom. This place can be called paradise. Yes, there are no angels and other paradisal attributes here. But there is a daughter with whom the main character can now always be together.
“Meander” ending explained
In the finale of the fantasy thriller The Maze Runner, the main character learns a little more about what is happening. Lisa almost at the very end gets to the biological passage, makes her way through the living flesh and sees the silhouettes of mysterious creatures through the walls. It seems that in the end the girl meets the real aliens – otherwise it is impossible to explain what is happening. One of the creatures is trying to get to Lisa through a thin wall of flesh – it looks like the creature wants to make contact. Well, it doesn’t show any hostility.
At the end, they show how Lisa moves forward again – this time through a tunnel of living flesh. Then Adam reappears. The girl tries to escape from him and dives into another technological tunnel. But the monster follows her. And then time runs out again: flamethrowers burners appear, and the woman hides behind glass in a safe room. But suddenly the cycle of burning is interrupted before it even started – and the heroine has to fight with Adam.
As a result, Lisa crushes Adam’s head with her feet and the killer and the monster finally die. It seems final and irreversible. The bracelet previously picked up by Lisa turns on again, the woman gets to the next room. And he meets his daughter in it – alive. The girl plays with a ball and looks quite carefree. Lisa says that she loves Nina very much, and the daughter answers her mother that they will be together soon. And then he calls Lisa to follow him.
But in the end, Lisa realizes that Nina is not real. The fact is that we are shown that the child lures the mother into a trap. And then, sobbing, Lisa comes back and chooses the right path – in accordance with the card on her hand. The mother says goodbye to her dead daughter and sets off again through the tunnel.
Liza almost gets to the exit from the maze – she sees the sky and hears the chirping of birds. But suddenly jumpers appear in the tunnel, which travel back and forth and can cut anyone who wants it like a blade. The woman realizes that she no longer needs the bracelet and begins to count the seconds to understand the intervals of movement of the blades. With difficulty, the girl passes the traps, but the latter cuts off part of her foot.
When Lisa gets to the exit, she learns the terrible truth. In fact, the sky is a picture on the next display. And there is no way out of the labyrinth. And then unknown alien tormentors turn off the monitor.
Liza is left all alone – wounded and hopeless. And at the end of the horror movie, flamethrower burners reappear from the walls. But then everything calms down, a passage opens above Liza and an unknown force lifts the woman. She dissolves in white light – and comes to her senses already at the waterfall. Apparently, unknown persons cured all the wounds of the woman. In addition, at the end, Lisa meets her daughter Nina again – it seems that she is already real. And in the last frames of the film they show the landscape of another planet.
But what actually happens in the finale of the science fiction film “The Maze Runner” and how to understand what is shown?
It seems that director and screenwriter Mathieu Turi has shot another parable about loss and attempts to come to terms with grief. At the beginning of the film, we were shown that Lisa, after the death of her daughter, despaired and did not know what to live for. But then, being on the verge of death, she was frightened. And then unknown aliens gave the woman a second chance.
Lisa’s journey through a labyrinth full of traps can be interpreted and explained as a search for redemption. It is no coincidence that the woman blamed herself for the death of her daughter Nina. And so, it turns out, she constantly drove herself into a trap. But then she found the meaning to live on. And even found a way out of a seemingly hopeless situation.
Monster Adam can be seen as painful memories of a past tragedy that continued to haunt Lisa again and again. And she was able to overcome her own demons only when she stopped hiding from them and faced them face to face.
Once in the corridor of flesh and biomass, Lisa literally experienced a rebirth – here the symbolism is obvious. And when the main character nevertheless reached the end of the path, devastated and wounded, she received a reward – literally a ticket to an alien paradise.
