The 5th wave is another of the ever increasing number of films aimed at the young adult market being released and is taken from a novel by Rick Yancey. It stars Chloe Grace Moretz as Cassie Sullivan a run of the mill teenage girl who’s life of worrying about school, friends and boys is irreversibly changed when she is thrust into the role of a survivor of an alien invasion which comes in the form of five waves, first an EMP type attack which leaves all electrical devices useless and removes all forms of communication, secondly a giant Tsunami which wipes out all coastal cities, thirdly a variation of the Avian Flu which kills most of the remaining population, fourthly alien patrols which pick off the few remaining survivors which leaves the pending fifth wave to complete the job.

Cassies mother is killed during the third wave so she sets out with her father and brother to find a local refugee camp and it’s while they are located here that the army appears and Leiv Schreiber shows up as Colonel Vosch explaining that the aliens have found a way to infiltrate humans so all survivors are to be taken to a nearby military camp where they will be screened and protected as the human fight back is underway. However the aliens have only managed to copy adult humans and not children so all kids are to be transported in advance. This does not go down well with the survivors and Cassies father, along with most of the rest of the adults, is killed in the ensuing melee, she is also separated from her brother and left stranded and alone while the other children are taken off and put through a boot camp in order to prepare them for the fight back.

The main the issue with the movie is that, once again, we are asked to believe the all survivors are good looking teenagers who act smart one minute then lose all reasoning when a member of the opposite sex turns up and the hormones are turned all the way up to eleven and despite the lack of amenities they all still seem to be able to look their best at all times. However on the flip side I liked the premise and the spin that was taken on the invasion, some of the apocalyptic sets are excellent and would stand up to most big budget movies and the CGI is good so perhaps this movie suffers from taking a step too far in taking material from a novel and instead of staying true to the material it tries to make it fit with the usual Hollywood clichés as it feels like a lost opportunity.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 Out Of 10