Movie Reviews

Because we didn’t have enough movies yet that were based on young adult novels (Divergent, Hunger Games, Twilight,…), they decided to turn another series into a movie. Because… you know, there is money to be made with franchises.

Based on a trilogy by fantasy writer Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave follows a girl named Cassie (Chloë Grace Moretz) who leads your average teenager life until aliens show up and unleash a series of attacks designed to wipe out the entire human race. Suddenly, prom doesn’t seem like that big a deal anymore.

After having already lost her parents in the first four waves, Cassie spends most of the movie trying to track down her brother, who is taken to a boot camp where teenagers are whipped into shape in order to fight off the aliens. Along the way she runs into two potential love interests. There’s Ben (Nick Robinson), a high school classmate, and Evan (Alex Roe), an alien who has taken the form of a human. None of this helps the story though. I guess a romantic storyline is simply a necessity in these kind of movies. Oh, you also have Liev Schreiber, Maria Bello and Ron Livingston running around, but their parts are mostly forgettable.

The 5th Wave comes with some nifty special effects, but that’s about as positive as you can get about this one. The script doesn’t deliver and director J Blakeson didn’t seem to feel particularly inspired either.