Hot Take: How to make watching The 5th Wave fun: Spot how many other movies it has ripped off and then give it a new title based on what you’ve spotted. Mine is called Buffy Potter and the Day After the Deep Divergent Twilight Hunger Maze of the Red Flies… They Live! What about yours?
The best thing about The 5th Wave will be the Honest Trailer it will give life to in the not so distant future. Actually, if you haven’t seen The Hunger Games franchise or the Divergent Series or The Maze Runner films or Twilight, The 5th Wave might be kind of okay. The film opens with an somewhat intriguing premise involving an alien invasion and some cool looking apocalyptic annihilation scenes but dissolves into every teen vs. adult action flick you’ve ever seen. In the end, The 5th Wave is mediocre (which is all you can ask for from a movie coming out in January, let’s be honest) but with a modest $38 million budget and existing source material — the movie is based on a trilogy of YA dystopian novels — it wouldn’t be surprising to see a sequel or two.
“Spoiler Free” Pros
- Chloe Grace Moretz
Moretz is proving to be a real talent. She delivers the most compelling performance in the movie and it feels like a very different movie when she’s not on the screen. - Maika Monroe
Fortunately, when Moretz is not on the screen, Monroe usually is. Monroe’s character Ringer is a real bad ass and has some very entertaining scenes. - The Sia song in the credits
What’s the song have to do with the movie? Absolutely nothing. It’s not even exclusive to The 5th Wave soundtrack but it’s damn good. The video which makes no reference to the movie, either, is pretty good, too.
“Spoiler Free” Cons
- The Others
The 5th Wave approaches the aliens — known as “The Others” — as the same as you and me. Well, not really, but they can inhabit you and me and take over our bodies as hosts. So, they basically are the same. How they operate and survive in our bodies is inconsistent throughout the rest of the movie and really doesn’t make a lot of sense because, apparently, (I guess???) when they are in our bodies they live and die just like us? - Except For That One “Other”
Why is there a superhuman “Other”? - Déjà Vu All Over Again
The twists and turns of The 5th Wave are nothing new. Granted, you can say that about most movies but when you are following a series of very similar films, you have to do something to stand out. There’s really nothing new here.