The 5th Wave is a 2016 American science fiction action film Four waves of increasingly deadly alien attacks have left most of Earth decimated. Cassie is on the run, desperately trying to save her younger brother.
Although it's based on Rick Yancey's young adult novels (two so far, and counting), The 5th Wave feels more as if it were cobbled together from a host of other, better science fiction stories.
The 5th Wave plays like a Wayans-brothers spoof of movies based on dystopian Young Adult novels. Seriously, it could have been called YA Movie the way it wallows in all the overly familiar tropes of the genre.
Yes, there are some powerfully riveting moments and hordes of extremely watchable, athletic youngsters, but director J. Blakeson's film is a paint-by-numbers job that also leaves the ending, predictably, just hanging there.
The 5th Wave is simultaneously boring and cringingly overwrought, with a bland protagonist, a completely nonsensical story, and another teen love triangle.