The 5th Wave

If you want to make money, all you need is a solid story about vampires and love triangles.

I think we all knew that after author Stephenie Meyer released her first book about Twilight. Girls went crazy for the story about Bella and Edward, as if this was the greatest book ever written. I will be honest and say, i have never read any of the Twilight books. Why ? Because reading about a romance between a vampire and a teen girl is simply not my thing. I prefer reading about realistic characters, or at least stories that feels interesting. I did see 3 of the Twilight films, the first one and Breaking Dawn Part 1 and Part 2. I made the mistake to see any of them, but at least i can be happy i did not see all of them. These teenage adaptations of books, made into feature films, have been done many times. We had a movie adaptation of The Host, Mortal Instruments - The City Of Bones, and other ones ( that i seem to have forgotten ). I think the best movie adaptations so far, made into motion pictures from famous teenage favourite novels, is without a doubt The Hunger Games. Jennifer Lawrence proved herself in the lead role as Katniss Everdeen, and i doubt we will ever see anyone beat her in this genre. As we all know, making movies from popular novel adaptations are always difficult. And i understand that fans hope that the directors capture the feeling of the books they love. So, here we are with a new film, based on the novel The 5th Wave, written by author Rick Yancey. There are three novels to The 5th Wave, and the final third one is not released yet. Since i have not read these books so far, i did not know what to expect, when the news came out that a movie adaptation of the first novel is being made. But then i saw the name Chloe Graze Moretz in the lead role. As many of you might know, she was really good in the Kick-Ass films. I am looking forward to see her also in Dark Places, a thriller with Charlize Theron. Since i have enjoyed The Maze Runner films, and the Divergent films ( so far ), could The 5th Wave be the adaptation from a sci fi novel, or is this another release in Twilight style, that no one asked for ?

Cassie Sullivan ( Chloe Graze Moretz ) is a normal teenage girl, enjoying life with her friends. One day, everything suddenly changes. Earth is being visited by aliens, who have placed out a giant spaceships, floating all over the world major cities. No one really knows who they are, or what they want. But once the disaster waves strike worldwide, people understand that this is very serious. For each wave, there is a scale. The first wave seems pretty harmless, but for each wave it becomes more dangerous. Cassie escape her home with her little brother Sam Sullivan ( Zackary Arthur ) and her father Oliver Sullivan ( Ron Livingston ). Oliver know of a camp, where people go to eat, get supplies and live as normal as possible. They locate the camp, and decide to stay, while waiting for answers on what will happen next. Suddenly one day, the camp is visited by military forces, led by Colonel Vosch ( Liev Schreiber ). He promise to make sure every child is safe, if they are transported to their military facility. Cassie watches her brother Sam being taken away, while all the grown ups are told to get information. As Colonel Vosch begin to inform everyone, something goes terribly wrong. One of the camp visitors draws a gun, feeling that something is wrong with this operation. People are shot down, as Cassie escapes, trying to get to her brother. Is Sam really safe, or is the military planning something else with the kids ?

Going in to see The 5th Wave in a full packed cinema, i did not know what to expect. I was mostly shocked that so many wanted to see it this night, i think there may have been only 6 chairs empty, and that does not happen very often. As the story begins, i kind of get a feeling that this could be pretty good. You don´t see the aliens, just an enormous space ship floating in the sky. So you really don´t know who these visitors are. Once we are told how they look like, through special made glasses, i kind of felt dissapointed. Luckily, there is a twist further into the story, so everything may not be what you think. Once we find out that the humans, who have survived these waves ( they get bigger for each threat level ), are trying to fight back against the visitors. I have seen a lot of science fiction action films in my days, and after watching The 5Th Wave, i can honestly say that this is not a good adaptation. First of all everything feels very predictable. You really don´t feel interested in the story, and the only times you actually feel interested is the scenes with Chloe Grace Moretz. To see her try and survive, does have a few descent scenes, but not much else. My favourite character in this film, is actually Bailey Anne Borders. She is really tough as the character Julia, who is actually the strongest soldier in her team. If they do make a sequel on The 5th Wave, i hope she returns. The rest of the film is basically following the basic concept of survival, against another life form. That could have been ok, if the story would have been more complicated. Instead, the plot is very simple and very predictable. Director J Blakeson directed the really good thriller The Disappearance Of Alice Creed, so there is no question that he can direct. I don´t know why he choose to make The 5th Wave so simple, i would have liked to see a much darker version, with better developed characters. It is like he choosed to use some parts of the book, but just made it simple. The 5th Wave is not as good as the fans of the book probably was hoping for, but at least it is better than any of the Twilight films. Is there a sequel coming ? Hard to say, but i am guessing we will at least see one more film, depending on how the box office numbers end for this first film. If we ever get attacked by a 5th Wave in Sweden, i have all figured out. I will escape in Ulf Ekmans private jet, and ask Fadde Darwich to fix the champagne party on board the plane. See, i know exactly how to handle the apocalypse.

Rating: DD