Roe, a relatively unknown British actor, plays Evan Walker. Robinson, “Jurassic World,” plays Ben Parish. Moretz, known for “Kick-Ass,” “Carrie” and “30 Rock,” stars as Cassie.
The novel has been adapted into a major motion picture, directed by J Blakeson, and stars Chloe Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Alex Roe and Maika Monroe. The novel is told from Cassie’s perspective, as well as first and third-person accounts from other characters, giving it an interesting dynamic. “The 5 th Wave” is an exciting book filled with gore, terror, sarcastic humor and the required love triangle.
It’s Cassie’s duty to save him, but with the help of two attractive boys named Ben and Evan. Cassie loses her mother and father to the waves, but her brother, Sam, has been taken by soldiers to an Air Force base. The fourth: “Silencer,” aliens that have taken over human bodies to kill remaining survivors. The third: “Pestilence,” a virus that causes bleeding from every orifice and death. The second, “Surf’s up,” cities are destroyed by earthquakes and tsunamis. The first wave, “Lights Out,” an electromagnetic pulse that wipes out all the power. “The Others,” as she calls them, have come to kill off the population in waves. “The 5 th Wave,” written by Rick Yancey, is a young adult science fiction novel that is now a feature film.Ĭassie Sullivan, a 16-year-old from Ohio, is thrust into the fight of her life after aliens invade Earth. Terrific in Kick Ass, Let Me In, Carrie and The Equalizer, the eighteen-year-old struggled with the more dramatic moments of If I Stay and is found wanting here too.Its another year and we have yet another tale of a teenager trying to survive in a dystopian world. The twist makes zero sense too.Īnd disappointingly Chloe Grace Moretz is a problem. Would you really be texting about some hot guy when there’s an alien spaceship a few hundred metres skyward? Would you really be stopping for a kiss when you’re desperately seeking your kid brother in a building that’s falling down? It’s patronising moments like this that undercut the Strong Female Role Model it sets up so well: that after invading aliens, after dead parents, after bullets in the leg, after missing kid brothers, what all girls really want is a hot guy. Splitting the narrative in two – it’s as much Ben’s story as it is Cassie’s – is unexpected.īut in its determination to tick as many boxes as it can – namely the romance box – the story (adapted from Rick Yancey’s novel by heavyweights Akiva Goldsman and Susannah Grant) comes undone. A scene where screaming workers race up a flight of stairs as the tsunami fills the stairwell is exciting. And it doesn’t have anything good to say about the army who use scare tactics to mould and condition children to become killers: “We didn’t get rescued, we got drafted!” Big issues for a kid’s movie. When Ben is told the kid on the opposite side of the glass is an alien and is ordered to kill him it echoes the Milgram Experiment. Blakeson – writer/director of The Disappearance of Alice Creed (woo-hoo) and writer of The Descent Part 2 (boo) – doing his best to run a tight ship. There are some things to admire here with director J. When Cassie and her kid brother (Zachary Arthur) are separated, she, teaming up with loner Evan (Roe), makes it across dangerous terrain to reach him before the expected fifth wave strikes, whatever that might be… Vosch (Schreiber), rounds up children and trains them to spot and destroy those posing as humans with school football hero Ben (Robinson) proving himself a worthy squad leader. Then comes the fourth wave: infiltration, with the aliens taking human hosts to wipe out the remaining survivors. The latest adaptation of Young Adult sci-fi (Hunger Games, Divergent, The Host, Ender’s Game, Mortal Instruments, The Giver, and The Maze Runner being a recent handful), this Red Dawn meets They Live meets Ender’s Game sci-fi romance drama occasionally interests but ultimately never really gets off the ground.Ĭassie (Grace Moretz) was your typical sixteen-year-old living a typical sixteen-year-old’s life when a mysterious alien mothership hovers over her hometown and unleashes waves of attack: first an electromagnetic pulse kills all power, then earthquakes induce tsunamis, with those who make it inland battling an Avian Flu epidemic.