Film review: The 5th Wave defeated by a lack of originality

There’s nothing original about the premise of The 5th Wave. Indeed, calling it derivative would be an understatement. A huge alien spacecraft arrives and hovers in the sky, silently and ominously, for a few days before launching a deadly assault – sounds familiar?

Nick Robinson and Chloe Grace Moretz in The 5th Wave. Chuck Zlotnick / Columbia Pictures

The 5th Wave

Director: J Blakeson

Starring: Chloe Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Maika Monroe

Two stars

Another weekend, another movie adaptation of a young-adult sci-fi novel. With vampires and dystopian futures in need of revolution already covered in some depth, this time the threat is out of this world in alien-invasion romp, The 5th Wave, adapted from the Rick Yancey novel of the same name.

There’s nothing original about the premise. Indeed, calling it derivative would be an understatement. A huge alien spacecraft arrives and hovers in the sky, silently and ominously, for a few days before launching a deadly assault – sounds familiar?

In case the similarity to Independence Day passes audiences by, the inclusion of Maika Monroe, who will star in the upcoming Independence Day 2, will hammer it home. She plays hard-as-nails, emo-teen soldier Ringer.

The big difference between The 5th Wave and Independence Day, of course, is that this is YA fiction, so it is up to the kids to save the day – most notably Kick-Ass star Chloe Grace Moretz – while the adults harbour dark secrets, which in this case is trumpeted loudly the moment Colonel Vosch (Liev Schreiber) and his men arrive to save our heroes.

The alien invaders – internal parasites that, in another example of the film’s liberal lifting of ideas from other sources, bear an uncanny resemblance to Alien’s facehuggers – carry out attacks of increasing severity, which at least allows for some impressive special-effects work.

They unleash electromagnetic pulse weapons, earthquakes, floods and pestilence on the earth’s helpless population in preparation for the final assault – and a loudly telegraphed twist.

The film is perfectly good fun, but is very much aimed at a teenaged audience rather than serious sci-fi fans, who will be better off waiting until June's Independence Day 2 for their fix of marauding aliens and bombastic FX. This is alien-invasion-by-the-numbers, while the tone can be a little cloying, veering between heart-wrenching moments of family love-and-loss to the requisite blossoming youthful romance.

The film’s villains come straight from the Dick Dastardley school of disguising inherent evil (in other words, don’t even try), and we’ve already covered the flashing lights and warning sirens that accompany the twist.

Of course, the film's closing scene leaves the survivors primed for a sequel. The 5th Wave is the first novel in a trilogy – this appears to be some kind of YA rule – and so, box-office takings permitting, there is a fair chance a sequel will be along in a year or so.