Movie Review:
Based on author Rick Yancey's novel of the same name, The 5th Wave is yet another sci-fi action movie with the hope of becoming the next big thing in young adult fiction. But as similar franchises continue to flood the market, director J Blakeson (The Disappearance of Alice Creed) and Columbia's new feature doesn't feel any different from what has come before, despite the extraterrestrial premise. Instead, we're left with a muddy, sappy and laughless dystopian melodrama that bares more of a resemblance to Twilight than Hunger Games.
The 5th Wave stars Chloë Grace Moretz as Cassie Sullivan, an average high-schooler who struggles to survive -- along with the rest of humankind -- after four waves of increasingly deadly alien attacks decimate the population. Amidst the chaos, Cassie must find and save her younger brother Sam (Zackary Arthur), who has already been recruited by the U.S. Army to fight the mysterious aliens.
Diving headlong in to the invasion, the movie starts by blowing through the first three waves in about 20 minutes. This consists of knocking out all of the power (First Wave), mass earthquakes (Second Wave) and disease (Third Wave) -- which are stiffly narrated by Cassie. Consequently, we hardly become familiar with the characters prior to the devastation begins, and at that time it's all just plot.
Luckily, Moretz makes an excellent, solid lead, and her character gets plenty to accomplish throughout the film. In early stages, Cassie gets separated from her friends and family, and is left to fend for herself, gives her character a while to adjust and think about what's happened.
Alas, that is also when Cassie meets hunky mountain man Evan Walker (Alex Roe), who guides Cassie through the woods to get the military base where Sam is stationed. Of course, sexual tension ensues, and Cassie falls prey to a brilliant dull romance subplot that occupies the majority of her character's storyline. It generally does not help that Evan isn't just bland but without sufficient backstory, particularly when we find out he's harboring a secret.
Meanwhile, Cassie's former senior high school crush Ben Parish (Nick Robinson) just so is actually the first choice of Sam's squad, which comprises of a ragtag couple of kids with nicknames like "Poundcake," "Dumbo" and "Teacup." Robinson specifically does an excellent job in his secondary role, but Ben's squadmates are forgettable and seem ripped from the pages of other bottom-shelf YA fiction. Even It Follows' Maika Monroe isn't able to bring anything interesting to her character "Ringer," other than too much eye makeup.
The corrupt human antagonists are even less developed. Liev Schreiber plays a hard-ass military man who is clearly evil from the beginning. Meanwhile, Maria Bello is woefully underutilized as Schreiber's second-in-command -- to the point that I wonder why she's in the film at all. However, both characters send Ben and his teammates on a mission to take out a group of alien enemies, which becomes one of the best action sequences in the movie.
Unfortunately, the film's predictable genre trappings are just too passive and familiar to garner any excitement. They're a mishmash of other, better properties like War of the Worlds, Ender's Game, The Hunger Games and The Walking Dead. There's even a Twilight-esque love triangle, which is unintentionally hilarious more than anything else. In the end, The 5th Wave is completely and totally benign.
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