The 5th Wave is the second feature film from director J Blakeson and is a big step up for him (budget wise), when compared to his first films’ 800k budget, to The 5th Wave’s 30 million dollar budget. The 5th Wave sees us introduced to a few teens and kids who are doing what kids and teens do, attend school and go to parties, when all of a sudden alien’s attack Earth and start messing up with everything and attacking everyone. The film stars Chloë Grace Moretz, Gabriela Lopez, Maggie Siff, Nick Robinson and Zackary Arthur.
The 5th Wave Trailer
I’ve come to notice from my time reviewing things on this site that at the start of each year in January, there always seems to be quite a few badly put together films put out there for everyone to see and I’m not sure why it is, but it’s something I’ve just noticed. Luckily enough lately, I’ve started to enjoy these types of things and go along to see them anyway just for the fun of it and The 5th Wave wasn’t nearly as bad as I had anticipated based on the month we are in.
This is really a film aimed at a teen audience and in the cinema I was in, apart from a few elderly people, the majority of the viewers were teenagers and people that looked around 12 and for something made for this audience The 5th Wave seems to me to cater perfectly to them. In some ways I may even suggest that the narrative may appeal slightly more to girls rather than boys, but both genders should have a good time with this.
The central character of this story is Cassie Sullivan who is played by Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass 2010). Cassie’s character is mainly interested in as teenage girls are, in talking about boys at her school with her best friend. Unfortunately for her though she can’t do that after a while because of all the alien stuff, but she still does meet two boys along the way which proves interesting.
I don’t really have any complaints about the actors and even though I don’t usually enjoy watching films like this with a large contingent of children in the cast, I didn’t really find anyone to be at all that annoying. In fact the only people I found annoying were the army actors which were poor in my view.
The major fault with the film is with the villains, while it was interesting to see the waves of attacks and the story unfold, the villains in the end aren’t all that great and while the film keeps building everything up for a big ending, it doesn’t really pay off and wasn’t that spectacular. While the ending line to me sounded a bit cheesy and like in the The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1, it seemed to be a set up so that they can lead us into coming to see the sequel.
Looking at the directing from J Blakeson, it wasn’t too bad to be honest and considering this is really his first big film, it was good enough to keep me entertained throughout the run time and I have to say that I did enjoy this more than I thought I would. The storyline doesn’t impress me much though, I wasn’t expecting to see a masterpiece when I went in to The 5th Wave but I didn’t get something that was a disaster either.
The 5th Wave Clip – “Chase”
To me this is one of those films that you could either rent or watch on a discount day at the cinema and might moderately enjoy if you’re not in the target audience. But judging from the teens in the room with me, they all seemed happy enough with the experience. The 5th Wave is one of those films that’s good enough to watch once, but it’s also fairly forgettable due to the mediocre storyline which makes it hard for it to stand out amongst other films being released at the moment.
