Sunday, June 5, 2016

THE 5TH WAVE (2016)

I have a weakness for alien invasion stories and having recently finished reading Robert McCammon's awesome alien invasion novel "The Border" I was in the mood for a good alien invasion movie, so I sat down to watch THE 5TH WAVE and...I'm still in the mood for a good alien invasion movie.

Told in possibly the blandest way possible, THE 5TH WAVE is the bland story of a bland teenage girl who is living a bland life when some bland aliens invade and then not much happens.  She gives a brief narration about the first four "waves" ("waves" are ways that the aliens tried to wipe out humanity: lack of electricity, tidal waves, sickness, aliens looking like humans), but it's covered so quickly that it has zero emotional impact.  So the main chick ends up in a refugee camp with her family.  Her dad is killed and her little brother is taken away by soldiers.  She now has to walk to the military base to rescue her brother.  How exciting.

Boring aliens, children trained as soldiers, earthquakes chasing people, a tough female soldier wearing 40lbs. of eye make-up, piss-poor dialogue, soldiers creeping around at night with bright LED lights on their helmets, an open-ended ending that was a total disappointment, slow pace, PG-rated violence, Liev Schreiber's talents wasted, zero nudity, zero blood.  Honestly, I can't see why anybody over the age of 15 would ever want to watch this movie more than once.  It's not a bad movie, but it's just so soulless and unoriginal that it's pretty much nothing.  The alien mothership did look cool though...for the entire 45 seconds that it was in the screen.  Skip it.