One day, Army tanks show up (the military is immune to the power outage, a fact never explained), and the intimidating Colonel Vosch ( Liev Schreiber) carts the children off in school busses to an undisclosed location, promising the panicked adults that they will soon follow. The rest of the family trek to a makeshift refugee camp in the woods (where everyone is armed to the teeth). And the fifth wave, unknown, is imminent.Ĭassie's mother dies in the plague. The fourth wave involves snipers who stalk and kill the survivors of the other waves. The third wave is a plague that kills millions more.
#IS THE 5TH WAVE ON NETFLIX SERIES#
The second wave is a series of tsunamis that wipe out coastal areas. Then come the different "waves" of attack from the aliens referred to as " The Others." The first wave is an electromagnetic pulse that kills the power across the globe. Her "normal" life disappears when a mysterious object appears in the sky over earth.
#IS THE 5TH WAVE ON NETFLIX MOVIE#
It’s almost as if no one involved with the movie - up to director J Blakeson, who is far more interested in how pretty Cassie is than what she can do - actually understands the appeal of the genre it is attempting to piggyback on.Cassie lives with her parents ( Ron Livingston and Maggie Siff) and her little brother Sam ( Zackary Arthur). For all her literal running around, Cassie is an annoyingly passive heroine, nowhere in the same league The Hunger Games’ Katniss or Divergent’s Tris. Cassie instead is lumbered with an absurd romantic detour with Evan (Alex Roe), whom she meets on her travels back to Sam, in which her most important function is merely to inspire him to feel a thing that will be important to the story. These include trainees such as tough girl Ringer (Maika Monroe: It Follows, The Guest) and Zombie (Nick Robinson: Jurassic World, The Kings of Summer), aka Ben, Cassie’s school crush who has, almost inconceivably, also survived thus far. The novel this is based upon, by Rick Yancey, is extremely well reviewed, so I’m guessing the problems here are the screenwriters’, not his.) It’s infuriating enough that this is the sort of wannabe gritty disaster movie that nevertheless ensures that although civilization has collapsed and there’s no running water or electricity (the first wave was an EMP that knocked everything out), hair conditioner and cosmetics remain in good supply and everyone is smoothly and smartly groomed at all times.īut it’s beyond unforgivable that the story strands Cassie, its protagonist, away from the significant action of the story, at the army base, and yet also neglects to make its plot pawns at the base anything like actual characters with story arcs of their own.
![is the 5th wave on netflix is the 5th wave on netflix](https://occ-0-2433-448.1.nflxso.net/dnm/api/v6/X194eJsgWBDE2aQbaNdmCXGUP-Y/AAAABXJp86bPFurSGDT6780MTOFVZSn89uIx6fbzWto51h7eW2r1_xdFUiUn2cdIKj9l7RuQoH1NvUwN_9zwp1IWzmwulRV6.jpg)
(The downright negligent script is by Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman, and Jeff Pinkner.
![is the 5th wave on netflix is the 5th wave on netflix](https://occ-0-2794-2219.1.nflxso.net/dnm/api/v6/X194eJsgWBDE2aQbaNdmCXGUP-Y/AAAABTxEcCgMuJSzayvnfiI3owbKIToSyfqVN39kVHFqT1ltvRjIzb7IfSH4DtSn-GD436jxGPGfhHz0tRwy5mpweFHH0Zok.jpg)
It’s infuriating enough that this is the sort of movie that thinks it can create suspense by ensuring that no one asks very obvious questions at very obvious moments, because if they did, it would ruin “surprises” to come. It’s infuriating enough that Cassie, who narrates the film, tells us things she cannot possible know even though we don’t need to be told them, because we were privy to conversations that she was not. It’s difficult to imagine what either of these fine actors saw in the script, beyond an easy paycheck.) (Leaders at the army base played by Liev Schreiber and Maria Bello fail to achieve even cardboard status, though it’s not for lack of trying. Maybe they do: People discussing Important Things in clunky artificial ways is a hallmark of the movie. No one knows another wave is coming, so they should be saying “ a fifth wave,” unless they actually realize they are characters in a story called The 5th Wave. army has to combat the aliens - very Ender’s Game - and Cassie must get to the Ohio base where he’s being trained, and where, we see, everyone keeps talking about “the fifth wave” of attacks they presume is imminent. He’s now a child recruit in a new scheme the U.S. Cassie is trying to get back to her little brother, Sam (Zackary Arthur), from whom she got separated in a ridiculously contrived way.
![is the 5th wave on netflix is the 5th wave on netflix](https://occ-0-58-64.1.nflxso.net/dnm/api/v6/evlCitJPPCVCry0BZlEFb5-QjKc/AAAABVuSGAevo_yWVPLpf6-Ri8HVDPTrlVnMO-GE_2qVlKx2gj_CwdJgY2zeIHKpAzwxk5LnXXLfU9nvyyzafdEyZmlIivls.jpg)
High-schooler Cassie (Chloë Grace Moretz: The Equalizer, If I Stay) has, unlike her parents, survived every wave so far Dad is played by Ron Livingston ( Vacation, Parkland), whose usual warmth and gentle humor has no opportunity to show itself. They haven’t communicated or started to steal our water yet or anything, but they are clearly intent on wiping us out. Here, there have been four waves of attack on Earth by mysterious aliens hovering over the planet in gigantic ships. This one is so lazy and so trite that it is itself a kind of disaster. And so we reach the point at which movies based on postapocalyptic YA novels have simply stopped bothering, and now just toss up on the screen a pretty heroine, a couple of hot guys, and an obstacle course of an adventure to plow through, and consider the job done.