The 5th Wave

The 5th Wave is a teenage drama about a struggle between humanity and an alien race known as The Others for control of the Earth.  I suspect there was a struggle over the tone of the film by the three credited screenwriters (Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner), as the movie often comes across as two completely different films struggling for dominance.  In one movie, we have the stuff about the alien invasion, and humanity's will to survive.  In the other, we have one of the dopiest teen romance stories to hit the screen in years.

You can probably already guess which part of the movie interested me more.  The opening 40 minutes or so of the film are a surprisingly dark, violent and brutal depiction of mankind's downfall as The Others arrive, and slowly begin to wipe out humanity in a series of attacks (or "Waves").  We later learn that the invaders want to populate our planet, and need to get rid of us first in order to do so.  However, we never learn exactly why, where they came from, or what happened to their previous planet.  I'm sure the original novel and its sequels by Rick Yancey goes into much more detail.  So far, The Others have launched four Waves of attacks on humanity.  The first Wave was a massive electromagnetic pulse which wiped out all electricity and power to our planet.  The second was a series of coastal floods that wiped out a large majority of the population, and destroyed every coastal town and city.  The third attack was a deadly virus which was spread by The Others using the birds of our planet.  By the time the 4th Wave came along, The Others had started inhabiting human hosts like parasites, and began gunning down the few surviving humans like snipers.

All of this is seen through the eyes of Cassie Sullivan (Chloe Grace Moretz), who begins the film as a typical suburban teenager.  She has a crush on the local high school football hero (Nick Robinson), parties with her friends, and looks after and cares for her little brother, Sam (Zackary Arthur).  When The Others arrived, Cassie's life changed little by little, until she was ultimately forced to watch most of her friends die, and even lost her mother to the virus attack.  Now it's just her, Sam and their father (Ron Livingston), as they flee their home and attempt to make it to a camp of human survivors who are making a life for themselves amongst the carnage of the world around them.  After spending an unspecified amount of time at the camp with her family, the military rides in with their armored vehicles, saying they are there to help.  As soon as they show up, Cassie asks why the military has power and energy to fuel their vehicles and equipment, while the rest of the world does not.  Good question.  Too bad the movie forgets to answer it.

The head of the military operation is Colonel Vosch (Liev Schrieber), and he promptly goes about separating the kids and adults in the camp.  He places the kids on buses that will take them to a military base where they will be safe, and assures everyone that the parents will be taken to the same base later on.  Cassie, however, gets left behind (she got off the bus in order to get Sam's teddy bear, and doesn't make it back in time before it leaves), and learns that the military are not who they say they are by witnessing a terrible scene of violence.  Now, Cassie must flee alone, and find a way to get back to her little brother.  Up to this point, I was completely with the movie, and found it strongly compelling for something that's supposed to be marketed for the teenage girl crowd.  But then, she runs into Evan Walker (Alex Roe), a handsome young man who lives alone in a farmhouse, and claims that his family was wiped out by The Others.  This is when the romantic subplot of the movie kicks in, and I gradually lost interest.

From this point, The 5th Wave becomes two completely different movies that feel like they are constantly pushing each other aside, competing for our attention.  In one plot, we follow her little brother Sam as he is trained to be a youth soldier by the suspicious Colonel Vosch, along with a bunch of other kids and teens.  One of the other kids in his squad just happens to be that former football jock that Cassie had a crush on at the start of the film, and both Sam and the football hero kid form a bond.  The other plot is a totally silly and completely ineffective love story as Cassie slowly falls for the rugged and mysterious Evan.  We get a lot of scenes of Cassie oogling Evan from afar, as he chops firewood, or bathes in the nude in the middle of a natural spring.  Cassie, who starts the film off as a capable and sympathetic young woman, suddenly turns into your typical underwritten romantic heroine, who falls for the young guy simply because of his body, and not because the two get to share any personal moments or connection.  Watching the scenes between Cassie and Evan, you can almost hear the awful romantic narration that would normally go over their actions. ("I quivered at the sight of him chopping the firewood outside, and I could barely sustain my lust...")

I have not read the original novel, but doing some research, I learned it received excellent reviews, and that it can be enjoyed by adults as much as the teen audience it was intended for.  With this in mind, I have to guess that the romantic angle is much smarter in the book than here, because the romantic leads here come across as personality deprived and shallow.  The fact that the original author has recently expressed disappointment with the film adaptation backs up this theory.  Why do this?  So many teen movies give us unconvincing relationships that hijack the entire story.  Why not use the same intelligence you used on the part of the movie that covers the alien invasion on the romantic angle?  Why not give these characters something to talk about, or give them strong personalities that they can play off of one another?  Or better yet, how about not giving us a romantic subplot at all?  How about making the guy interested in the girl, but she's too driven to find and save her brother that she doesn't have time?

Sadly, this is not the only way in which The 5th Wave betrays the interest it builds in its opening half.  Eventually, the movie becomes a string of Young Adult cliches that we have seen in the numerous post apocalyptic teen dramas over the past few years.  I have expressed in previous reviews that these movies are all starting to look the same to me, and how I am finding it harder to generate excitement within myself when I have to watch yet another story about a teenage girl who rises up or leads a rebellion against a tyrannical regime, and still finds time for a romantic love triangle.  This movie at least saves its love triangle aspect for the sequel, should it ever get made. (The box office returns have not been too strong.) Late in the film, Cassie has a run in and teams up with her high school crush from before all of this started, and there are hints that she will have to choose between him and the rugged Evan at some point.  I'm sure that certain members of the audience will find the question of whom Cassie will end up with endlessly fascinating.  I personally could take it or leave it, and will not feel any loss if no more movies are made.

If only this movie had been allowed to be different.  If they had cut out all the required elements and trappings of a Young Adult Sci-Fi story, this could have been a game changer for the genre.  Instead, we get another cookie cutter offering of a genre that gets less interesting with each installment of each franchise.  There is stuff to admire here, but it gets drowned out by stuff we've seen too many times before.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

0 comments