The 5th Wave (2016)
(On Cable TV, September 2016) To its credit, The 5th Wave begins reasonably well, with a first few minutes seemingly going past the usual teenage dystopian tropes in order to land in more serious territory than usual for the genre. But once that introduction concludes, the subgenre’s clichés take over. The film gets dumber, senseless and clichéd at once. Big revelations can be seen coming minutes in advance and there’s little here to warm up savvy viewers who have already seen everything before. Acting-wise, Dakota Fanning gets the heavy lifting of the main role, but Maika Monroe comes in and steals a few scenes. There are a few nice moments of devastation early on, but there’s no denying that The 5th Wave is a movie coming out five or two years too late, after the alien-invasion panic of 2010 or the teenage-dystopia craze of 2014. But so it goes when a sub-genre’s bubble pops: there are always going to be movies caught in the aftermath. I’m not feeling too bad about this trilogy never achieving its second and third instalments—a quick look at Wikipedia’s plot summary of the follow-up novels quickly shows how insane, rote and depressing the series becomes over time. While everyone should congratulate themselves on killing off the teenage dystopian trend, it’s an end that couldn’t come fast enough to prevent the very disappointing The 5th Wave. But let’s not worry: no-one will remember this film in five years, except as part of an actor’s filmography.
