After a couple of big Young Adult franchises like Twilight, The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Maze Runner which were all successful other new potential ones keep trying to repeat that success. The 5th Wave is another one that tries. But the question is whether The 5th Wave is different enough to stand out within this genre.
Cassie (Chloë Grace Moretz) is normal teenager. She lives together with her brother and parents in a nice neighbourhood and has her teenage crushes, but doesn’t stand out. Her normal life suddenly changes when an alien ship starts hovering above the earth. It soon becomes clear that the intentions of those aboard the ship aren’t friendly and that they slowly start eradicating humanity. To do this they use various methods, which Cassie calls waves. The make sure that electronic equipment no longer works, that there are tsunamis or have birds spread a deadly virus. Cassie manages to survive these all, but along the way loses sight of her brother. With the threat of the fifth wave she has to find him and on her way she has to face several obstacles.
It’s always a shame when a movie opens strong and than loses all steam and unfortunately that’s the case here. The first 30 minutes you get to know Cassie and you feel the threat of the aliens. So there is nothing wrong with the world building part of the film, but not enough is done with that and the movie quickly start using all those young adult film cliches. So you can expect kids/young adults having to save the world, love interests developing and adults you can’t trust. Those elements are used without much fantasy making this movie very predictable. So this is a weak start of a new YA franchise and I wonder if it’s possible to fix this in a sequel, if ever one is made.
