Susan Granger’s review of “The 5th Wave” (Sony Entertainment)
What would happen if Earth was invaded by extra-terrestrials?
In the 1st wave, they’d switch off the planet’s electrical power: an onerous precursor to further disasters, particularly for technology-dependent teenagers.
In the 2nd wave, there’d be a Biblical deluge, tsunamis triggered by earthquakes. The 3rd wave is the avian flu, fatal to humans, followed by an infestation of alien body-snatchers, dubbed Silencers.
The 5th wave? Yet to come, as the strange craft belonging to the visitors, called the Others, hovers overhead with plans to wipe out the human race and repopulate our planet.
Ohio high schooler Cassie Sullivan (Chloe Grace Moretz), her younger brother Sam (Zachary Arthur) and her boyfriend Ben Parish (Nick Robinson) are among those affected, as tidal waves smash Miami and London’s Tower Bridge comes falling down.
Giving her a gun, Cassie’s father (Ron Livingston) advises, “Nowhere is safe anymore.”
That’s evident when the suburban parents load their kids on buses to be taken to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, deemed a ‘secure’ location by Colonel Vosch (Liev Schreiber), and Cassie becomes separated from Sam.
Saved from a brainwashed enemy sniper by Evan Walker (Alex Roe), Cassie is, nevertheless, suspicious of her mysterious benefactor.
Ineptly adapted from the first book of Rick Yancy’s YA trilogy by Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman, and Jeff Pinkner, it’s shallow and confusing, as British director J. Blakeson (“The Disappearance of Alice Creed”) makes the violence intense with pointblank shootings resulting in a multitude dead bodies.
Geared to appeal to “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent” adolescent audience, one can only hope that upcoming installments in this sci-fi series will get better.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The 5th Wave” is an insipid 4, a dystopian disappointment.
