[Review] The 5th Wave

The trailers for The 5th Wave never looked promising, and the film confirms this. Adapted from a Young Adult novel of the same name, this thing plops into theaters with massive thud.

The film begins in a run-of-the-mill dystopia. Cassie (Chloe Grace Moretz) runs through a forest wielding an assault rifle and stumbles upon an abandoned convenience store where a semi-suspicious guy is hiding (this anti-climactic part is also in the trailer). Anyhow, the film's world is so under-established that we can't tell whether she's in a post-Walking Dead setting or just an unkempt rural town. Instead of being intriguing, it's just an annoyingly vague opening before the film flashes back to *where it all began*. Where what all began? Should we even care?

Some boring voiceover narration eventually reveals info of aliens and a virus spreading. The film is essentially a mix between Signs and The Happening, except it lacks the suspense of Signs and the unintentional hilarity of The Happening. I'm not one who goes around proclaiming that television is superior to cinema right now, but in this case you'd certainly find more rewarding genre fare on small screens, even if it's CBS' ridiculous yet surprisingly entertaining "Under the Dome". And we all know that Chloe Grace Moretz is a good actress, but the material is so bad here that it has you believing otherwise. Then there's Nick Robinson, who is even flatter in this movie than he was in Jurassic World (he was good in 2013's indie hit The Kings of Summer though).

Everything in The 5th Wave gets worse as it goes along, and the sluggish pacing is nearly unbearable. It's almost as if someone decided to make a sci-fi thriller where nothing happens. This is the 5th wave of bad YA adaptations. It's 5th-tier sci-fi. And it's a major studio release with a 5th-spot box office debut (okay it's 6th, but just go with me). Don't waste your time on this.

3/10