The 5th Wave, based on the young adult book of the same name, written by Rick Yancey. It was directed by J. Blakeson, (and not very well) with the adaptation done by Susannh Grant, Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner. The movie stars Chloe Grace Moritz as Cassie Sullivan, Nick Robinson is Ben Parish/Zombie, Ron Livingston plays Oliver Sullivan, with Maggie Siff as Lisa Sullivan. Alex Roe is Evan Walker, Maria Bello as Sergeant Reznik, Maika Monroe plays Ringer, with Live Schreiber as Colonel Vosch and Zachary Arther as Sammy Sullivan. Dumbo is Tony Revolori and Teacup is played by Talitha Bateman.
The story should be a simple one. It follows Cassie Sullivan, a sixteen-year-old, who is trying to survive in a world that has been decimated by waves of alien invasions that have already wrecked the Earth’s population and sent it back into what appears to be similar to the Stone Age. With the first wave, darkness was the only thing that survived. Only the lucky who escaped the first wave lasted after the second one. With the third wave, the unlucky were the ones who survived; lastly, only one rule applied after the fourth wave and that was to trust no one.
The book and the film open with Cassie, during the beginning of the fifth wave, running from those aliens who only look human, and who wander the countryside killing anyone they might see. She is headed to a training camp, established by the aliens, or Others as they are called, to hopefully rescue her five-year-old brother, Sam, who is located in what is called a refugee camp. Cassie believes she is alone, until she meets a guy named Evan Walker, who just may be her hope for rescuing her brother. She has to choose between trust, defiance, life and despair, surrender or death respectively.
Arriving at a gas station, she finds a wounded man, who she believes has a gun (only a metal crucifix), fires and kills him with her M16 rifle. Again, on the road in Ohio, she discovers the bodies of those victims who have been recently killed. An unknown assailant shoots her in the leg. She hides under a car, but is faed with either emerging from under the car and risk being killed or stay under the car and possibly bleed to death. While this is happening, her high school crush, Ben Parish, who was stricken during the third wave with a disease that was killing humans, is cured by a Dr. Pam, who puts him into a program called Wonderland at Camp Haven at Wright Patterson Air Force Base inhabited by human hosts posing as refugees. Dr. Pam exposes an unidentified creature attached to Ben’s friend Chris’s brain and has Ben kill the alien, thus killing Chris too. Commander Vosch, who killed Cassie’s father and is a human host, tells Ben that all the remaining humans will die, but not without fighting. It is here that Ben joins Camp Haven’s army and is known as Private Zombie.
Back to Cassie, who has passed out and awakens in a bed, with her wounds healed. The person who has helped her is Evan Walker and she is in his country house. As she continues to heal, they become much closer until one night, they have a fight and end up kissing. We next switch to Cassie’s brother Sammy, who is at Camp Haven. All the children are given colored tags which signify different things. Green is for the unhealthy and red is for the healthy, which Sammy is. He is cleaned and put into the Wonderland program, with Ben Parish or Private Zombie as the squad leader. Sergeant Reznik, the squad sergeant, is a cruel and vicious man, and taunts all the members of the squad especially Sammy who is now Private Nugget. Nugget is the smallest and slowest of the squad and angers the squad because he is. But Zombie protects and cares for him.
One of the members goes “Dorothy,” meaning crazy, and is found dead later in the Process and Disposal hangar, being replaced by Private Ringer, who improves the squad’s marksmanship, helping the squad to graduate in the top three.
Now Cassie is not certain about Evan, and while he is out during his nightly hunts, she searches his belongings and discovers her M16 rifle. (ARE YOU STILL WITH ME IN THIS?) The literature does a lot of jumping around. They finally leave his home and travel to Camp Haven looking for Cassie’s brother Sammy.
Wearing special helmets that can see humans that are really aliens, Zombie and his squad are on patrol, when they are attacked. Ringer discovers that her implant is part of plan to kill humans and that Camp Haven is really an Other Death Camp and Resnik is responsible for the attack and they kill him. In order to help Nugget escape, Zombie has Ringer shoot him so that he can get back into Camp Haven and release Nugget. Cassie at this point discovers that Evan through his actions on their journey to Camp Haven is the Silencer who shot her. He is wounded and she helps him recover, but eventually gets into the Camp, meets Dr. Pam who is knocked unconscious and decides to kill herself. Zombie escapes, Cassie finds Sammy and meets Zombie. They unfortunately are captured by Vosch who tries to kill Nugget/Sammy, but Evan has planted bombs at the Camp to destroy it. Evan saves Zombie, Cassie and Sammy and sets off the bombs. The rest of Squad 53 return, saving Zombie, Cassie and Sammy while the Camp is destroyed.
To express a little more fully the WAVES: The first one affected the lights The aliens used an EMP wave that took out all electronics/lights/technology and killed about half-million in cars and planes. The second wave caused massive tsunamis that killed three billion people. The third wave infected many with a virus, using the birds as carriers and killed 97 percent of the remaining humans. The fourth wave is where the remaining adults are massacred and not all the humans are really humans. The final and fifth wave is the children who are desocialized and resocialized to kill the remaining humans that they believe are non-human.
There was no simple or easy way to explain this novel’s plot or storyline, which was adapted into the film in an intermediate fashion and unfortunately not very well. In the film, it is basically the same and no need for repeating it here. There were too many changes, poor dialog and camera work. The cinematography was sufficient as were the visual and special effects. The acting with the exception of Chloe Grace Moritz and Maika Monroe was just passable. The music was used to pull at the heart strings and engage the audience in the supposed drama being expressed on screen. Unfortunately, this was a typical attempt at another young reader’s book being adapted to film and it just didn’t work. Sad, the book was interesting and in this case, much better. GRADE: 1 of 5 crowns
Recent Comments