After having seen “The Hunger Games,” “Divergent,” and the “Twilight” movies, most teens have their bars set pretty high for new young adult fiction thrillers. Unfortunately, “The Fifth Wave” did not pass that bar last week on Friday, January 22, 2016.
Based on the best selling book by Rick Yancey, the film was brought to life by Jeff Pinkner, Susannah Grant and Akiva Goldsman.
The ever-so-famous Chloë Grace Mortez portrays the role of Cassie Sullivan. Many Moretz fans were hoping to see the superhero side of her in this film, but we never fully got that.
Sullivan is your typical independent Ohio high school student who prefers not to be the center of attention. However, when a spaceship hovers over her neighborhood one day, she finds herself with the weight of the world on her shoulders to save everyone.
Everyone in Sullivan’s town pretty much packed their bags and took off, but Sullivan and her family have managed to stay together, in spite of these attacks. That is, until the U.S. military shows up and begins to take children away from their parents to “safer grounds.”
Unfortunately, Sullivan and her brother get separated when she leaves to get him his bear stuffed animal and the bus leaves without her.
“I thought that the book was way better than the movie because it was far more action-packed. Overall, I think I had my hopes up too high for this movie, and it didn’t really live up to my expectations,” says sophomore Giadanna Giglio.
Sullivan deals with a global apocalypse when the “Others” begin to attack humanity in waves. The first wave is stripping them of technology. The second wave is unleashing earth-shattering environmental attacks. The third wave is deadly viruses that begin to diminish the population. In the fourth wave, the “Others” inhabit human bodies.
And finally, the fifth wave. Most of the movie takes place during the fifth wave of the alien invasion, hence the title. If you want to find out what the fifth wave is, you have to watch the movie because it is too much of a spoiler.
This middle section of the film is the saggiest. I have to say, though, I never found myself bored during the film – just disappointed every time it brought me to my toes. The romance included in the film was all too familiar, but it slowly picked up again when Sullivan rescues her brother.
One of the perks of this movie was the aliens. Although their name, “The Others,” was not so creative, they were not messing around. Where extraterrestrials in other movies like “Independence Day” and “War of the Worlds” pretty much just set out to destroy humanity by blowing things up, the “Others” in “The Fifth Wave” thought of techniques that shocked not only the characters in the movie, but also the audience watching.
In the future, we can look forward to seeing the rest of the trilogy in theaters. Producers Tobey Maguire and Graham King are moving forward with production of the other two books in the author’s proposed trilogy, “The Infinite Sea” and “The Last Star.”
Do you thing the next movies will fulfill the disappointment we endured during this movie?
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