The 5th Wave

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The 5th Wave is the latest in the long line of young adult books being adapted into a movie and it stars Chloe Grace Moretz as a teenage girl trying to find her younger brother in the middle of an alien invasion. The way the invasion works is they attack in waves. The first wave is a power outage. The second one is tsunamis and earthquakes. The third wave is a virus. The fourth wave is an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style assimilation. The fifth and final wave is a group of people who the aliens have trained, annihilating what’s left of the human race. First things first, let me get into what I liked about the movie. The acting, for the most part, is pretty solid, better than most young adult adaptations. Chloe Grace Moretz, in particular is really good, managing to do her best with the material she’s given, especially because she has the daunting task of carrying the movie on her shoulders. Actor Liev Schreiber does good with his performance despite the fact that the character serves no other purpose than to spew out exposition. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the guy she meets in the woods about halfway through the movie. Actor Alex Roe delivers his awkward dialogue fumbling through a very stilted performance, and has the charm and charisma of a cardboard box. The plot is interesting enough, but isn’t executed particularly well, mostly because this movie is poorly written. The pacing is a bit off. The movie’s opening is really strong, but then the movie really slows down for awhile afterwards, while building a boring, forced, cliched “romance” involving a talented and charismatic actress and some guy with no demonstrable talent. Despite this movie having some glaring problems, I actually did end up enjoying it as a guilty pleasure. 

6 / 10