The 5th Wave (2016)

Wonderful character development!

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I saw the trailer for this movie in the cinema, I am a fan of the leading young actress, so that a big draw for me, and it looked like something good, I read later the negative reviews it received, but I was still willing to give it a chance, directed by J Blakeson (The Disappearance of Alice Creed). Basically a city-sized alien spaceship suddenly appeared above Earth, the extra-terrestrials are referred to as "The Others", and teenager Cassie Sullivan (Chloë Grace Moretz) recounts the events following the invasion. The alien invaders unleashed made four attacks, referred to as Waves of destruction. In the 1st Wave, an electromagnetic pulse permanently destroyed all electrical power, including transportation and water. In the 2nd Wave, the planet's geology and fault lines were manipulated by the Others, causing earthquakes and mega-tsunamis that destroyed coastal cities and islands. In the 3rd Wave, a strain of avian flu virus was spread, with birds carrying the infection across the planet, one of the casualties was Cassie's mother Lisa (Maggie Siff). Cassie, her father Oliver Sullivan (Office Space's Ron Livingston) and brother Sam (Zackary Arthur) find a refugee camp in the woods with roughly 300 survivors. A few days later, an army unit with working vehicles arrive, Colonel Vosch (Liev Schreiber) claims that the 5th and final Wave is imminent, the Others have begun to use humans as physical hosts, this is the 4th Wave. The children are being taken to safety at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, they say the buses will return to retrieve the adults, Cassie is separated from Sam, and witnesses the army massacring the adults, including her father. Cassie scavenges her way toward the base, but she is shot in the leg by an unseen shooter and passes out. About a week later she wakes up in the farmhouse of Evan Walker (Alex Roe), who saved her, they leave together and head for the base. Cassie is shocked to learn that Evan is an Other, the aliens have invaded Earth years before, he was sent as a sleeper agent and merged his consciousness into a human host. Evan admits his humanity was reactivated when he saw Cassie, he disagrees with the invasion and lets her leave, he warns that Colonel Vosch and the military are possessed by the Others. At the base, the military have used deception and technology to convince the rescued children that humans outside have been possessed, they provide them with military training, forming them into squads to go on kill missions. Sam is in a squad led by Zombie aka Ben Parish (Nick Robinson), Cassie's former high school crush, along with tough teenage girl Ringer (Maika Monroe), Dumbo (Tony Revolori) and Teacup (Talitha Eliana Bateman). While on a kill mission, Ringer removes her military tracking implant, she is registered as an Other-possessed human on the squad's scopes, the squad realise that the plan is to kill real unpossessed humans, making them the 5th Wave. Ben devises a plan, he has one of his squad shoot him and returns to base, claiming the rest of the squad were killed, then he will try and retrieve Sam, who was left behind. Ben confronts Colonel Vosch about child warriors being the 5th Wave and Cassie kills Sergeant Reznik (Coyote Ugly's Maria Bello) during her implant operation. Cassie find each other and leave to find Sam, Evan sets off many bombs and warns them to hurry before the entire facility is destroyed. Colonel Vosch and the surviving military evacuate with the human children by military aircraft, while Ringers helps Cassie, Ben and Sam to escape, just as Evan completes the destruction of the base. Ben's squad is reunited, and Cassie ponders the strength of hope as humanity's driving force for survival. Also starring Gabriela Lopez as Lizbeth, Bailey Anne Borders as Julia, Parker Wierling as Jeremy and Nadji Jeter as Poundcake. Moretz is a good choice as the teenager living in the world facing alien invasion, the four attacks of power outage, earthquakes and floods, a bird-flu pandemic and human body snatching set things up reasonably well, but the imminent fifth attack gets clichéd, I sort of went along with it, but not all of the special effects are great, it is muddled, and the ending (that may lead to an unlikely sequel) is silly, it is not boring or terrible, it is just an overly average science-fiction drama. Adequate!

I must admit that I had expected something more from this movie. But it just turned out to be a teenage movie with a layer of action and Sci-Fi elements to spice it up.As for the storyline in "The 5th Wave", well it was rather mundane and generic, although the twist as to whom The Others were was a nice one, and I had not really foreseen that one.The acting in the movie was adequate, but Chloe Moetz constantly walks around looking like a sullen and semi-depressed girl, so it was hard to take her serious in this movie.The special effects were quite good, as was the CGI. And let's be honest, this is very much a CGI carried movie, because the storyline, plot, characters and acting could only take the movie so far. So, of course, the CGI effects had to lift up the movie.This was hardly an outstanding or particularly memorable movie. And I doubt that I will return to watch this movie a second time.

If you know the book trilogy, of which this is just the first book, then you know the secret of the alien "others." It could have been revealed in this movie, but then the movie would never have been made. The "Others" are rabid environmentalists, going around the universe to different planets killing off the top-dog species on each planet on the assumption that the top species is a danger to all the others. So that is their motive to exterminating the human race. But you can't have "good" environmentalists as "bad" aliens without a lot of thinking, which this movie doesn't have.

The poor user reviews here should not be taken as gospel. Give it a shot. Has some major actors in parts and the main characters, the daughter and her brother, do a surprisingly good acting job. The story is well paced, effective, and kept my interest.