Review: The 5th Wave

Young Cassie Sullivan (Chloë Grace Moretz) is first glimpsed running through the woods before warily approaching an abandoned convenience store to forage for supplies. She hears a man cry for help and, suspecting he is hiding a weapon inside his coat, kills him with her machine gun. "I miss the Cassie I was," she laments via voiceover.

That Cassie was like any normal teenager, though perhaps a tad too sanitised for its target audience's protection. She parties responsibly, is awkward enough to start a conversation with her high-school crush Ben (Nick Robinson) by commenting on his cell phone case, and is the type to let her dad (Ron Livingston) know that she made it home in time for curfew before serenading her younger brother Sam (Zackary Arthur) to sleep. Then the Others arrive.

The Others are the unheard and unseen occupants of a massive alien mothership that has been circling the United States before deciding to make Cassie's Ohio neighbourhood as its base of operations. Ten days pass before the Others reveal themselves to be the bearers of deadly tidings, unleashing a series of attacks intended to decimate the human race. The first wave is an electromagnetic pulse that plunges the planet in darkness. The second wave comes in the form of earthquake-triggered tsunamis. The third is a deadly virus that claims most of the survivors, including Cassie's mom (Maggie Siff), though many are inexplicably immune. The fourth wave is the knowledge that not all humans are actually humans, that the Others are among us and they are out to kill. The revelation of the fourth wave, occurring shortly after Cassie and her family arrive at a refugee camp, results in Cassie being separated from her father and brother.

The bulk of the film is devoted to Cassie's efforts to rescue Sam from the air force base where he, Ben, and hundreds of other children and teenagers have been transported for their safety. Naturally, the military have more on their mind than safeguarding their young wards; they want to train the children to fight the Others. As Cassie makes her way to the military base, she's waylaid by the mysterious but hunky Evan Walker (Alex Roe), who saves her after she's shot by a sniper and insists on aiding her in her mission to reunite with Sam.

Based on the first installment of Rick Yancey's successful YA trilogy, The 5th Wave hews close to the formula employed to profitable returns in the Twilight and The Hunger Games franchises. Though she superficially resembles Katniss on paper, Cassie is a less passive Bella, eyes wide and mouth agape at the goings-on around her. Like both heroines, Cassie is saddled with a love triangle, though Evan appears to have the distinct edge over Ben given the amount of time Evan and Cassie spend together. Where The 5th Wave distinguishes itself from the sisterhood, which also includes Divergent's Tris Prior, is its Eighties vibe. The film very much feels like a throwback to such sci-fi/post-apocalyptic works such as Red Dawn, They Live, and Starman.

One could do worse than The 5th Wave, which is not exactly a ringing endorsement but quite right for the latest in the seemingly endless conveyor belt of end-of-days teens juggling the fate of humankind with their romantic travails. By this point, however, aren't audiences rooting for the so-called enemies to triumph? Then again, in The 5th Wave's case, alien overlords who would jeopardise world domination to bother themselves with a bunch of pesky teenagers deserve whatever they get.

The 5th Wave

Directed by: J Blakeson

Written by: Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner; based on the novel by Rick Yancey

Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Alex Roe, Liev Schreiber, Maria Bello, Ron Livingston, Maggie Siff, Zackary Arthur, Maika Monroe