He and all the other adults get pushed aside by an Army colonel (Liev Schreiber, who deserves better) as the kids trade banter, learn to fight and swear revenge on “the others,” as the aliens are known.
Together with a cute boy (Nick Robinson) she has a crush on from school days and a random hunk (Alex Roe) who saves her from a sniper, she must lead humanity’s teen remnant to an “Independence Day”-style showdown that this Dollar Tree blockbuster can’t quite afford to stage.Ī problem with “The 5th Wave,” adapted from Rick Yancey’s best-selling young adult novel, is that there is nothing scary in it - unless you count the panic I felt when I realized my college classmate Ron Livingston is now old enough to play the dad of a movie lead. Even for Ohio, that counts as a below-average day. “When you’re in high school in Ohio, everything feels like the end of the world,” says Cassie (Chloë Grace Moretz), a teen who will shortly experience something worse than losing an iPhone: A flying saucer zaps everyone with an electromagnetic pulse, unleashes tidal waves and a bird flu and sends aliens disguised as ordinary folks to infiltrate Earth. Unlike the movie, I have trouble believing teens can be made to do their algebra homework without whining, let alone instantly cohere into a precision army to repel an alien invasion. Like “The 5th Wave,” I believe the children are our future. Rated PG-13 (action violence, profanity).