Review of The 5th Wave (2016) by Dottheeyes — 22 Jan 2016

For a while, The 5th Wave is modestly promising: a dramatic in-medias-res opening finds the teenage heroine (played by Chloë Grace Moretz) encountering a stranger while searching an abandoned convenience store and shooting him in a panic.

A prelude to her post-apocalyptic isolation is then shown, a crowded and entertaining 20- or 25-minute montage of Roland Emmerich-style set pieces, including tsunamis crashing into major cities and a visit to an expansive quarantine zone.

The film then implodes spectacularly, however, with end-of-the-world spectacle giving way to a flatly executed series of YA clichés. Everything is either inconsistent (the alien antagonists' body-snatching-in-suburban-Ohio end game does not comport with their early global omnipotence), trite (the introduction of a studly farmhand to serve as love interest), or uncomfortable: much of the story revolves around child soldiers, and the film is not concerned by the idea of an adolescent army, only whether they are fighting for the right side.