“The 5th Wave” should have been titled “Young Adult Movie” based on the way it struggles to incorporate every played-out cliche of the genre.

Rating: 2.0/5.0
Directed by: J Blakeson
Starring: Chloe Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Alex Roe
Release Date: January 22, 2016
Rated: PG-13

After four “waves” of increasingly devastating attacks, most of humanity is dead and the Earth is left as a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The first wave was unimpressive, but it set up a potential alien invasion thriller. Then the second wave hit, and the film was shaping up to be an exciting disaster film. With the third wave, frustration began to set in as it became clear where the film was going. By the fourth wave, the film had turned into the start of a run-of-the-mill dystopian young-adult franchise.

The film tells the story of Cassie Sullivan, one of the survivors of the waves of alien attack. After she is separated from her younger brother, Sam, in the most cliche way possible (she gets off of a soon-to-depart bus in order to find a teddy bear that he left behind), she sets out on a mission to find and rescue him. The first act of the film, while completely lacking in nuance and originality, contains some compelling sci-fi action elements: planes fall out of the sky and giant tsunamis decimate coastal cities. But by the second act, the film drops the ball and becomes like every other young-adult novel inspired film: A young person is on the run from some powerful force in a dystopian world, all while establishing a predictable love triangle. The film trades a generic alien invasion film for a generic young-adult film, but at least the former could have been more exciting.

One of the saving graces of “The 5th Wave” is the performance of Chloe Grace Moretz. She is able to inject at least some human emotion into even the the most hollow and derivative scenes of the film. While there are some leaps in logic taken with her character (how did a high school cheerleader who’d never held a gun learn to survive and operate an automatic weapon?), Moretz’s portrayal is down-to-earth and relatable to the young target audience. The same cannot be said for the remaining acting talent in the film, especially the child actor who plays Cassie’s brother, Sam (Zackary Arthur). He can read lines and say “I love you,” but his character is portrayed with so little emotion, it made almost no difference whether he was rescued or not.

“The 5th Wave” goes through the various story beats of the disaster/post-apocalyptic genre as if they were a list of checkboxes. There are humvees entering a survivor campsite, a lot of walking through the forest and along a deserted highway and even an unexpected romance. There may not be a single original bone in “The 5th Wave’s” emaciated body. It feels like the film was written by a screenwriting robot which was only preprogrammed with dystopian young-adult novels. The story is very predictable, and the big reveal in the last act can easily be predicted as long as you aren’t asleep in the theater. This should leave you wondering: If an amateur film critic can foresee the aliens’ plans, are these advanced aliens really all that smart?

While “The 5th Wave” contained some slightly compelling action early on, it quickly devolved into something even teenagers would hardly enjoy. Calling this film wasted potential would be unfair, because it only ever had the potential to be half decent. Let’s just call it wasted time.