The 5th Wave

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).

This film tells the story of a young girl who fights to survive and to reunite with her brother, after mysterious alien attacks on Earth by various methods.

"The 5th Wave" is a bit different from other alien attach films because there is no widespread battles in urban areas. There is not even an alien looking creature in sight! That keeps mystery alive and suspense going. The first few waves unfold quite quickly, and the fifth wave takes time to develop. Just when things seem to be a certain way, there are multiple plot twists happening together which makes the film even more interesting. The guy playing Evan Walker is very handsome, I hope to see more of him in future films. Another good thing is that "The 5th Wave" is not preachy at all, unlike a similar recent film "Tomorrowland". I enjoyed watching "The 5th Wave".

So this basically reminded me of Red Dawn. But I enjoyed it more. For me, Chloe carried the film. And they mix it up enough with action, adventure, and romance. To keep you entertained long enough.

I'm glad they didn't drag out the movie, but disappointed they aren't going to make the other 2 films related to the other books.

To be honest, I didn't know anything about this movie and the book. I wanted to watch a tsunami movie and I googled it. Since I watched most famous tsunami movies, I saw the name of this movie in the list and started watching it. First of all, the tsunami scene took about 1 minute at most :) Generally speaking, I never bored, but I think it's a bad movie. I never liked the acting. C. G. Moretz is a good actress actually, but she didn't give a good performance. I haven't read the book, and probably I won't. Will the second movie come?

Rating it a 7 because it totally kept my attention. However, this could have been a 9. The first 30 minutes are really good. They really should have kept down that serious adult track. Unfortunately it became a teen movie. It's like running a marathon and gassing out after mile 8. They should have kept it adult level, but rather it got a little cheesy making it a kid-level PG-ish feel. All that being said, there was still enough to keep my attention to finish up and I didn't regret my 2-hour investment.