Rank: 2/5
In “The 5th Wave,” aliens are attacking earth and have managed to wipe out the majority of the population.
Cassie Sullivan, played by Chloë Grace Moretz, tries to survive in a world without her mother and father. She is separated from Sam Sullivan, her younger brother, and does all that she can to fight her way through a post-apocalyptic world where aliens take human form, leaving her nobody to trust as she tries to reach her brother before it is too late.
Last year, action film fans saw the end of “The Hunger Games” series, and it feels like “The 5th Wave” is trying way too hard, yet not hard enough, to fill its shoes.
The two films’ concepts are almost identical. A young girl tries to protect her younger sibling and, in doing so, gets thrown into a bigger picture than she originally intended, becoming a symbol of a revolution.
However, “The Hunger Games” cannot be called the original film with its premise of children being thrown into dark psychological survival stories. When it first released, people drew comparisons to “Battle Royal” and “Lord of the Flies.”
But unlike its most recent predecessor, “The 5th Wave” doesn’t have the conviction to put its characters in psychologically compromising positions.
It’s true that almost every character experiences the death of their families, is drafted into the army, and is forced to kill, but the film never acts like it cares what a child might do in these situations. Whenever something incredibly scarring happens to a character, they just accept it and move on. This is unlike “The Hunger Games,” where Katniss and the other characters are constantly worried about their mental health stability.
It doesn’t help that the film feels like it is simply going down a checklist of things that have to happen in a young adult, post-apocalyptic movie.
In fact, it recycles so many plot points that it doesn’t know how to juggle all of them.
At one point, Cassie is injured and saved by Evan Walker. Evan is a mysterious man, excellent marksman and, conveniently, a very skilled physician. Cassie once sees Walker bathing in a nearby lake and she notices his chest looks like a glorified Ken doll, meaning he is more than likely trustworthy.
Walker decides to help Cassie find her younger brother. It does not take a lot to guess what might happen between them when they are in the woods accompanied by a campfire and some gauze.
While Cassie begins her rendezvous with Evan, it feels as if she has completely forgotten about her younger brother. Meanwhile, Sam, the five-year-old, seems to be fine without his entire family and is training his way to become a post-apocalyptic warrior.
“The 5th Wave” tries too hard to be the newest “Hunger Games,” and at times the most recent “Twilight,” but falls very short due to its characters feeling placed in recycled plot points from better movies before it.