User reviews

I.....don't even know what to say it was just so bad. How this movie even got made from the script is beyond me. I would say "Hmmm well maybe it looked good on paper" but the dialogue was predictable and dry. I personally haven't read the book, maybe it's a good book, I don't know, but this movie just flat out sucks. I saw it with a group of 7 people and none of us liked it. I wish we had seen a better movie, I really do, because it was just so unbearable to watch. I recommend this movie to no one. I'm serious. It's that bad. Do not watch it. Come 5 months and it's on some streaming service, knock yourself out, but seriously do not pay to see this you will be as disappointed as I am.

The movie is soo poor , awful script with all the cliches in history , illogical sequence , illogical emotional connections and alot of plotholes ...

The trailer was awesone so I decided to watch it. Awful teen movie, bad effects, stupid story. Save money and go watch another movie.

1) The script was AWFUL 2) What the hell was the plot?? No plot or character development 3) Acting was poor 4) Haven't read the books but I can only assume that this film ruined a really good YA book series

I'm not even sure this is worth the review time.

Not a single part of this movie is worth highlighting and even some of the worst of all time movies have at least something positive. Maybe when I calm down I can think of one. Wait...I got it. The actors WERE awake for their scenes and probably memorized most of their lines. Okay, bravo cast!

I'm aware of the teeny-bopper film series Hollywood likes to make and most of them have been pretty pathetic - not to mention sometimes left incomplete: The Host and Divergent, to name a couple. Can't say much for The Maze Runner or The Hunger Games since I never made it past the first one of each franchise. And this will be the same: only one crappy TDM chapter for me.

This soulless film had zero heart put into it, the characters were bland, uninteresting and contained zero chemistry with each other and even the comic relief was a pain to watch. In fact, it wasn't until 3 or 4 unfunny "jokes" that I figured he was supposed to be the comic relief. Overall, the production felt lost and without a director at all.

Apparently, the grand majority of kids mysteriously die off and the remaining ones are sent off to camps because the government fears them. Hmmm, boy that sounds familiar. Perhaps it's too soon to make a movie about the U.S. Government separating families from their kids and putting them into camps against everyone's will.

I digress. One kid escapes and faces multiple options of factions. In almost every other scene, she threatens to leave one for another, so get used to that redundancy. Eventually, they meet more clichés, predictable characters and twists and then the movie anticlimactically and abruptly asks you to wait for a part 2 of 4(?) I guess. Actually, my guess: there won't be another of these unless it can be made as cheaply as this one was for. My bet: $5 million MAX.

The acting sucked, the dialogue was cringeworthy, the special effects looked worse than a Sharknado entry and ideas were literally stolen from the similar X-men series. Hell, it was even produced by the same company.

Okay, I thought of one more positive. The previously aforementioned film, The Host, was definitely inferior to this, but that's just because it had an annoying girl's voiceover throughout. This, alas, didn't have that one worse quality.

Totally skip this and pray to GOD they fail to make any follow-ups.

***

Final thoughts: Okay, perhaps this might be an unintentionally hilarious movie to watch at home with a group of drunk friends. Despite this movie being completely void of any real humor and DEADLY serious, I can see myself having fun with several great drinking games due to its repetitiveness and scenes/ideas lifted from slightly better teeny-bopper films.

I am not sure why this movie was made. It is a slow moving movie with very predictable scenes, horrible acting, and terrible lines. We laughed all the way home after seeing it. Don't waste your time seeing this poorly made movie. I don't expect it to last long in the theaters. It was one of the worst movies I have seen. They even tried to use a line from a Dumb and Dumber. There really isn't a chance for this movie...not even one in a million. I must have looked at my watch 30 times during the movie, wishing I could be somewhere else. Run hard and fast away from this show. You will thank me later.

No storyline can only mean bad scripting and a hill to high to climb for any actors! The writer was under the assumption that as long as you have people with super powers it doesn't matter if there is no real story or any substance how wrong!! As much as I love sci fi and all that is supernatural it has to be followed with good storylines and script writing aswell as actors This failed badly !

Yet another movie about teens facing a ridiculous plot, with crappy effects, and a lot of cringy romance. yay.....

Stupid kiddie teenie no brain dead brain rubbish waste of time... low levels of production, crap story, cheesy as hell, horrible acting, absolutely no point to the whole thing and the ending is one to leave you for the dead... please please please I beg of you... DO NOT waste your time here.

No plot no nothing, I've seen better C movies than this.

What teenager wrote this? And why are there only boys in it? Weird...

First off, I did not read the book, I have no connection to this movie or any competing movies, I am not in the target audience but I have enjoyed other movies made from YA books (both the Hunger Games and Twilight series-HG I'd rate 7, Twi a 6 to 6.5, just so you know where I'm coming from.) Not having read the book I don't know if the problem with the story was in the original work or the screenplay but it was awful. Truly bad. The end product feels like a couple of 13 year old girls mined their imaginations, building on one another's narratives until they either figured they had enough, got bored or realized that the whole thing was just too silly to continue. The story was incredibly uneven. When the characters main goal is achieved it is given less time than the an unimportant story arc. There were too many groups so none got the time needed to create any reason for the viewer to care. Side stories were introduced and dispensed with and served no purpose in movie the story forward. I don't think I'm giving anything up here to say that this story deals with children. I kept wondering what happens when children age? Are new children born? Why was one of the groups made up of people who would have been under 18 when the "event" happened? Why don't they have powers? Where did these powers come from? All things that the collaboration of 13 year olds at a sleepover forgot to include in their movie. The acting, for the most part, was acceptable. I'm pretty sure that given a better script I would look more kindly on the performances given. There were a few exceptions that had me cringing, you'll know it when you see it. The production values were nothing that a college student couldn't come up with. There was one scene that semi-impressed but for a movie based on special powers there was a distinct lack of special effects. I stopped and restarted this movie five or six times. I almost quit watching but I decided I wanted to write this review and I didn't want to write a review for a movie unless I completed it. So, I disliked this movie so much I had to finish it! I am genuinely perplexed at the 7 thru 10 ratings this movie has gotten. In a database that has Pulp Fiction and The Godfather I & II at 8.1 to 8.7 just who is giving this time waster anything above a 5??

This movie was awful. The story, the dialogue, the acting. All bad.

There's a reason this movie made 10 million dollars LESS than the budget, and that is worldwide gross. And it only cost 34 million to make! That's pretty sad. Hopefully the huge flop prevents a sequel.

Looking down a couple pages of the ratings I found several duplicate 9 and 10 ratings, so they are doing their best to pad the score on this and it's still only a 5.5/10 right now. That and the fact that it was a huge loss in the box office should tell you something...

Avoid at all costs.

I read the books, all three of them. The first one was riveting. The concept of teens getting "powers" unexpectedly and inexplicably is certainly not new. This idea shows up in a quite number of books and movies, but Alexandra Bracken does a nice job of pulling off. Her characters are believable and they get into some really desperate situations. The lead character, Ruby, is a very introspective girl who grows into being able to handle more than she ever thought she could. Nice growth there. By the third book (In the Afterlight) we are into Lifetime for Women and I had a hard time finishing.

But the transition to the screen is flat, wooden and full of cliches

So far so good. Whoever did the casting for this movie? I can only assume he/she was paid under the table for his/her choices.

Ruby was described as pale skinned - ( could see my pale face reflected in the stainless steel surfaces) and has green eyes (He leaned down a ways so our identical green eyes met) and (where my eyes were pale green) and long brown hair in a pony tail (His hair was the same shade as mine-deep brown). Her pony tail kept getting grabbed according to the books.

So they cast a black girl with a big hair into this role? Now don't get me wrong. If a black actor is called for, cast a black actor. Chubby is frequently described as being black, in many different places throughout the books, described in many different hues and Vida is definitely Latina. Lots of other black people in these books. And Zu is definitely oriental - she mentions her mom wants to take them back to Japan. If you didn't have THREE books describing Ruby as white, it really would not matter.

So why do you not cast Ruby as white?

PLUS I just don't see Ruby's personality from the book to this actress. Do not see it. Different girls.

Do not see the actor playing Liam (Harris Dickinson) as being 'unbelievably handsome" which Bracken comments on frequently through all three books. Nice looking but not unbelievably handsome.

This is a trilogy of books - like The Maze Runner or The Hunger Games - but I'd bet this never gets into making a second movie, let alone a third. I certainly hope so.

This supposed movie appears to be awfully like yet another awful teen superhero TV series. The ones that are constantly clogging our TVs with terrible acting, scripts, PC ethnic cast, even worse CGI effects and brain numbing plots "teens good - adults bad". Except that this one's never made it past the pilot. So they released it as a movie. OMFG!

Seriously, no more words needed. Cringe and so so bad

Poor acting, poor screenplay, poor directing, poor special effects.... Sometimes I have the filling the younger actors should first spend years on the stage playing classic characters before moving into films as they only rely on the director's advice and cameramen 's skills and add zero value to the above.

I can't believe somebody invested money to make this movie. Teenagers with superpowers persecuted by evil adults? How original! Don't waste your time with this one.

Just a piece of crap story with boring and empty script 60% of the movie is nothing the idea is a remake for x-men ._. people who giving this 9 and 10 you are from the cast 100% this is so lame DON'T WASTE TIME ON IT BELIEVE ME

Poor dailouge, poor story,poor acting, the cgi was meehhh...,lot of plotholes. probably one of the worst movie released in 2018.

Really the only appeal of this film is watching it to point out all of the elements stolen from other franchises. The girl has telekinesis powers like Eleven from "Stranger Things", another one can do a Jedi mind trick, they have Harry Potter-style sorting, they hang out in a big outdoor community like Divergent and so on and so on... The acting is all flat, the story bland and predictable.

Worst movie I ever seen. Felt like you missed important parts all through the movie and the things you saw you could have guessed from the start.

Dont waste your time.