द फिफ्थ वेव

The reason to watch this is for Cassie's performance. The reason not to watch it is the rest of the movie. It starts promising. An alien ship orbiting and people wondering what is all that about. A massive EMP wipes out all electrical connections (Wave 1). A flood (Wave 2). Bird Flu (Wave 3). The aliens are depopulating the planet. The few survivors who were immune to the bird flu gather and the military shows up to take them to a military base. Through luck, Cassie misses getting on the bus. By then it becomes very predictable. Cassie still intends to reunite with her brother, who was on the bus, and that is the rest of the story.

As a low-budget sci-fi flick, The Fifth Wave starts quite promisingly with a more logical continuation from the opening scenes of "Independence Day". The end of the world is nigh. An alien spacecraft has put itself into a threatening earth orbit (note: actually 'orbiting' - as a nod to science guys like me - rather than just inexplicably hanging there in the sky, as Douglas Adams once put it, "in much the same way that bricks don't").

The aliens are throwing calamity after calamity down at small-town America in 'waves': earthquakes; tidal surges; modified bird flu; and bombings.

Against this stressful backdrop, the ever-reliable Chloe Grace-Moretz ("Kick Ass"; "Let the Right One In") plays Cassie who after getting separated from her younger brother Sam (Zackery Arthur) faces the dangers of a cross-country Alabama trek to rescue him.

Like I said, quite a promising premise, and it flows quite nicely until the family get to a Fort Wilderness style sanctuary in the forest. There however the plot goes awry, with the aliens making a seemingly ridiculous strategic move.

Jaw-dropping dumbness now follows with a 'see-it-coming-from-a-mile-away' plot-twist casting Cassie onto her solo-mission, and the film declines into a rather poor 'Hunger-maze-giance' wannabe with Cassie torn between the affections of old crush Ben (Nick "Jurassic World" Robinson) and mysterious saviour Evan (Alex Roe). Much muscle-rippling and skinny-dipping ensues as Cassie oohs and aahs in a girlie fashion that erodes her kick-ass (no pun intended) characterization to date.

The director is J Blakeson.... no, me neither. This is only his second feature, and is a big ask.

The film rather obviously cues up a sequel: this is the first of a series of – apparently quite good – books by Rick Yancey, with the next in the series being called "The Infinite Sea". I don't think I will be rushing to the cinema to see the sequel, if it does happen.

A disappointing film that starts with real promise but then loses its way. Grace-Moretz really does deserve better. Nice animated Gif poster though!.

(Please visit http://bob-the-movie-man.com for the graphical version of this review, and to comment with your thoughts. Thanks).

Saw 'The 5th Wave' because the concept was a good one, there was interest in how survival, alien invasion and teenage romance would work together and because there is talent in the cast. Was determined not to let my apprehension, as to whether 'The 5th Wave' would execute its good concept well (having seen so many potential wastes recently), get the better of me.

It is a shame that after genuinely wanting to like it, not with the intention to hate it or want to, that 'The 5th Wave' was yet another potential waste, executing its good idea very ordinarily. Not one of the worst cases but one of the most infuriating ones, not irredeemably awful but the cons outweigh the pros and the cons are hardly big in size. It is not that it didn't try, to me it tried too hard, executing its elements underwhelmingly and they just don't go together.

There are a few good things. Chloe Grace Moretz gives it everything, a very committed performance and comes off well compared to everything else. In fact, a good deal of the cast are game.

Production design has some atmosphere and while the effects are variable a few are above so-so, credit is due for not overusing and abusing them that it became a CGI-fest. The start does intrigue.

Conversely, the camera work and editing were wanting, being far too drab and hasty-looking rather than dynamic. Other effects are artificial-looking. The direction showed someone not at ease with the material and one finding it difficult to control it. While Moretz and the lead cast are game, the children are inept.

The dialogue is clunky and excessively cheesy, particularly in the teenage/romantic scenes. It was the story execution that was particularly underwhelming about 'The 5th Wave'. There was not enough at stake for the survival/end-of-the-world element to work, it was too predictable, a lot could be seen from a mile away, and urgency and tension were missing. The alien-invasion parts suffered from a lack of thrills, no suspense and less than menacing villains. The teenage/romantic elements are just awkward and bog the film down, placed inappropriately at times too.

On top of neither element being executed well, they don't go well together, coming over as a muddled jumble of tones and cobbled together storytelling, with every recycled, fatigued cliché imaginable with nothing new done with either. The twists were obvious and didn't really feel like twists, the big one not excepted. The characters were generally bland with their development at best sketchy. The ending is sheer nonsense and impossible to take seriously. Also have felt that open-ended ones hinting at a follow-up are rather risky in case that falls through, watching 'The 5th Wave' did nothing to change my mind on this.

In conclusion, not awful but there are a lot of issues here. 3/10 Bethany Cox

The 5th Wave is based on the book of the same name and it's main focus is on a girl reconnecting with her brother. It's a tried and true story for the post-apocalyptic genre and doesn't do anything really cool with it except for the title. The title of the film plays into the "twist" in the film, if you can even call it that and it's about the only thing that it does a little differently.

Nothing too bad on the acting side. There's no Oscar winning performances but everybody does a decent job with the crap dialogue they are given. Except the kid... He just stares all the time, looking dumbfounded. Must have been a way to keep people from calling him "The annoying kid."

The film looks good in it's presentation. The choreography in the fight scenes is a bit exaggerated but I enjoyed that. What is does so wrong is the absolute straight 'teen angst novel' scenes and relationships. The books suffered from this too and I feel it could have been made to be a bit more serious to kind of adult up the series and make it fit with a wider audience.

Overall it is a bad adaption of an average book. It alienates everyone over the age of 12 by making it way too much like the novel and not trying to change up some of the things it needed to.

We had The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, St Elmo's Fire, The Goonies to name but a few. Defining moments in movies, defining teenage angst, growing pains and young love and loves lost. Films that stand up today, not just for nostalgia's sake but because of solid acting, amazing characters and good stories.

I despair for the drivel that our millennial's have to endure today in the name of cinema. If you've grown up on good films through the years then you want to avoid The Fifth Wave. Encourage your young-lings to watch something else.

Chloe maybe a good actress, but she couldn't drag the film from the mire of this cliché driven plot line with shallow characters and an awfully banal story of an alien plot to take over the Earth in as seemingly clueless manner as possible.